So, I mention in a previous entry that I'm considering throwing the blog open in April to entries from any or all of its members, and what do I get for this incredible gesture of generosity? Vague, mumbled implications of unsavory group sex, and dubious threats from several quarters to post on subjects like baseball, gardening, and recipes.
Now it's not that I have anything specifically against such topics. I mean, sure, I'd only watch a baseball game if there were hostages involved, and I regard gardening as a somewhat interesting sociological remnant left over from mankind's hunter-gatherer stage -- no, wait, that's camping, okay, I don't know what the fuck is up with gardening, all I know is, I spent enough time helping my mom with hers when I was a teenager to understand that green growing things and I both flourish best when I'm not involved in their cultivation, and as for recipes, well, if I were Robert B. Parker's genre-revolutionizing shamus Spenser, I'd probably think the idea of people posting recipes to my personal weblog was a fabulous one, but, on the other hand, I'd also be living in Boston and spending all my time pistol whipping unpleasant people with my extremely large automatic pistol, so I probably wouldn't have a personal weblog, so never mind that.
Yet, notwithstanding all these sane, cogent, insightful and inarguable points, I'm a wise, rational, adult, and tolerant individual, and if folks want to post about appallingly boring nonsense like this on my blog, well, I suppose I should just affix to my facial features a glassy eyed grin and stand silent.
But I never do that.
See, the thing of it is, is, here at the Miserable Annals of the Earth, we are nothing if not cosmopolitan. Inclusiveness is our watchword, and while I'm not entirely sure what a watchword is, still, the fact remains and it is irrefutable, we strive for mass appeal on this blog. And I feel it would be antithetical to that spirit of populism and universal openness to post entries on such narrowly focused topics as America's past time, gardening, and recipes. After all, how many among us care about the sport of Babe Ruth, Ty Young, and Barry Bonds? What proportion of the population sticks seeds willy-nilly into the fecund earth and then lolls about indolently waiting for them to sprout? And as to recipes, for the love of God, Montresor, nobody cooks these days, we all eat out, order in, or microwave. Surely, surely, only a narrow, tiny, obsessed group of fringe hobbyists would have any interest in such postings, and I say, it's time to stop sucking up to the special interests out there and get back to cultivating the masses.
I know. I know. I mustn't call you Shirley.
It is, clearly, for me to blaze the trail, to shine the light, to fix the beacon, to strike the pose, to set the example. For populist posting and all-appealing entries, I must lead the way and help us all build a bridge to the 21st Century. And so I shall. I shall indeed. I shall do so with style, with panache, with no little dash, nor derring do. I shall do it all, and do it now -- by writing about HeroClix.
HeroClix! Three sybillant syllables (okay, they're not, but it's alliterative, so back in your hole, you) that speak volumes to any who may be listening. HeroClix! A clarion call to comprehension on the part of every man, woman and child living or dead anywhere in the universe. HeroClix -- a native of Missouri might well declare dem fightin' words, only to slink back into guilty silence once informed that in point of fact, HeroClix is only one word, fightin' or otherwise.
Here are some things I've considered about HeroClix lately --
My House Rules regarding HyperSonic Speed may require further refinement. Or, it's equally possible that Kingdom Come Flash and Kingdom Come Captain Marvel should simply be banned from the game as hideously unbalanced. All I know is, when I went up against Nate during his recent visit, my Kingdom Come team, and specifically the two figs already mentioned, utterly dismantled his fairly powerful Avengers team without ever taking a lick of damage. KC Flash scurried right up next to the Veteran Iron Man, outwitted his Invulnerability, and then proceeded to pummel the Golden Avenger into shiny yellow toothpaste with a barrage of 2 damage, 12 AV HyperSonic Speed attacks. KC Captain Marvel hurtled up next to his otherdimensional namesake, and using Exploit Weakness to bypass the good Kree soldier's own Invulnerability, promptly battered the hapless wretch into cosmically aware goo.
This seems to me to be a trifle unbalanced. Perhaps it calls for further modification of my rules. Perhaps HyperSonic Speed is such an overwhelminingly effective super power that I should rule that it cannot be used in combination with any other super powers at all. Thus, HyperSonic Speedsters could not Outwit, or use Exploit Weakness, or get a damage bonus from Close Combat Expert, or Incapacitate with a blow (oooo... a HyperSonic Speedster with Incapacitate. Now there's some chocolately goodness HeroClix hasn't given us yet... exactly what would happen to a fig that ended up with eight action tokens on it in a round?)
To one extent, it makes sense. No matter how many times Quicksilver drives left hooks into the manly loaflike jaw of Thor, or Superman, or Ares, or Count Nefaria, none of those worthies are going to be much more than annoyed with the meteoric mutant assailing them at high velocity with a barrage of babygirl buffets. And yet, Captain Marvel, with the Wisdom of Solomon, should be able to see the weak spots in an opponent and bypass their defensive powers, while the Flash, as a master of the Speed Force, should be able to vibrate his fists at whatever frequency is necessary to bring even the Man of Tomorrow to his knees.
And it's not like HeroClix doesn't have a cure for such ribaldry anyway, a cure known as Mind Control. Had any of Nate's figures possessed so much as a Whirling Hypno Coin, they could have taken momentary control of the KC Captain Marvel and had him pummel the KC Flash into gumbo in a mere trice, after which, they could have declared that KC Captain Marvel was turning off his Impervious, which would have lasted until the start of his controller's next turn. With his Impervious turned off, Captain Marvel would have been easy meat; Hawkeye, Captain America, and Quicksilver between them could have turned out his magical lights in jig time. (Which is not, you may be surprised to learn, an actual racial slur, but is, in point of fact, merely a reference to the fleet footed Hibernian dance of the same name.)
So, perhaps, it isn't necessary to actually further refine my rules. Perhaps I should, in fact, take this as evidence that my House Rules actually accomplish their stated goal, which is to say, making HeroClix work more consistently with their comic book source material. After all, in the comic books, the Kingdom Come characters are pretty damned formidable. I suppose it only makes sense that Iron Man and Captain Mar Vell couldn't stand up to them for longer than a heartbeat.
In other examples of vindication for my House Rules, we have a recent combat where I used a lot of the Collateral Damage villains on one team. Captain Cold is largely ineffective (or so it seems to me he would be) under normal HeroClix rules, as he's a single target Incapacitate piece with Barrier, a crappy attack, a so so range, and a decent movement, plus a couple of clicks of Running Shot. (In point of fact, he doesn't get his first click of Incapacitate until his second power slot, where he still has Running Shot, but his movement has dropped considerably, from a 10 to an 8).
With a 9 attack, Captain Cold's odds of actually hitting his nemesis the Flash with a blast from his cold gun are pretty much slim and none. The most recent version of the Silver Age/Modern Age Flash, the Icons Unique, has a 19 Defense, meaning Cold needs to roll a 10 on 2 d6 to hit him... not very likely. The original Flash piece, from Hypertime, has only a 17 defense, which means Cold needs only a slightly above average 8 on 2d6 to hit him, but that Flash also has Super Senses, so he can dodge a successful attack on a 5-6 on a d6.
All told, for someone who usually manages to successfully blast the Fastest Man Alive at least once per confrontation, Captain Cold has a woefully inadequate attack. Put him up against any HeroClix version of the Flash, and he's going to get beat to pieces in less than a nanosecond... especially under my House Rules, which allow multiple close combat attacks for full damage.
And yet, under those same House Rules, Captain Cold is a marvelously effective piece. Why? Because I have made a slight tweak to the power Barrier. Under HeroClix rules, you can only set up Barrier markers (defined as Blocking Terrain that fills an entire square) in four consecutive squares of completely open terrain, the first of which, at least, has to be within the attacking fig's range. This makes Barrier useful, sure. However, under my rules, you can set up a Barrier token on any square, even one that contains different terrain types, or, most importantly, an opposing character. This has the effect of suddenly surrounding the target character with a square full of Blocking Terrain (in Captain Cold's case, we can assume he's just used his cold gun to embed an attacker inside a gigantic iceberg, something he often does in the comics he's taken from). The fact that Captain Cold can, on his first click, move up to 10 squares (again, under my House Rules) and then create four continuous squares of Blocking Terrain, starting up to 8 squares away from his position, allows him to potentially imprison up to 4 opponents without having to make an attack roll... said imprisonment which will last until the start of Cold's next turn.
It's a lovely power, one that is fairly common in comic books (where lots of characters have the power to momentarily immobilize their opponents) but that doesn't really have any representation in WK's normal rules. Oh, sure, you can slow someone down with Incapacitation, which gives a successfully hit target an extra action token, but Incapacitation is a chancy thing, and very different in effect from enclosing an opponent inside a Barrier. With Incapacitation, if the target had no action tokens on it, then it can still move next round, it will just take a click of damage doing it (or not, if it has a power called Willpower, in which case, it will just move anyway and ignore the attack effect completely). If the target already had an action token on it, then, yeah, you've effectively paralyzed it next turn, and given it a click of damage, too (unless, again, the target fig has Willpower).
However, when you set up a Barrier on a square where an opponent is, you don't do any damage to them -- you just immobilize them, as they are suddenly stuck fast in the middle of blocking terrain. This is much more consistent with the effect of, say, Spider-Man's webbing, or Captain Cold's ice attacks, than the way Incapacitation functions. And, even more realistically, if your fig has a power that lets it destroy Blocking Terrain (Super Strength) or just ignore it (Phasing/Teleport) then, well, what happens in comic books will happen in the game -- your Super Strong character will flex his or her muscles and shatter the ice walls around it (or tear the webbing like tissue paper, or whatever) and your Phasing/Teleport character will simply bamf to another location, or waft through the binding material like a ghost.
Still, against a group of opponents like Domino (who is always hiding on Hindering Terrain and being really annoying with her Probability Control powers), Professor X (with his highly unpleasant Mind Control abilities, as well as three targets he can use it on), and the Beast and Wolverine, Captain Cold can be a very effective piece. Combine him with Felix Faust, who also has barrier (Felix sets up mystical constructs that encase his opponents, like giant hovering crystals and such like), so they can trade off paralyzing annoying opponents, and you have a very useful combination indeed.
In addition to Barrier, I'm also very pleased with similar modifications I've made to the Smoke Cloud power. This came in very handy late in the game, when my Owlman piece had a somewhat battered Flash on one side of him and a barely bruised Wonder Woman on the other side. Down to nearly his last click of life, Owlman did what he most likely would have done anyway in the comics -- dropped a smoke bomb at his feet and hid within the billowing black vapors.
Under HeroClix rules, of course, you can't set up Smoke Terrain markers on an occupied square. Under my rules, of course, you can, which allows figures like Owlman, who have both Stealth and Smoke Cloud, to obscure themselves, protecting themselves from all attacks, unless the attacker has Super Senses or the ability to destroy Hindering Terrain. It certainly saved Owlman's bacon for another couple of turns, and did it in a very satisfyingly comic book-compatible manner, as a little added bonus.
In other notes, the Veteran Dr. Light knows how to rock, if only on his very first click. 10 Attack Value, Incapacitate, 10 Range, 17 Defense with Energy/Shield Deflection, 3 Damage with Ranged Combat Expert... hang a Stunning Blow on this guy and he's an accurate long range cannon who deals out 5 clicks of damage AND an Incapacitation token with every successful strike. (He's probably not this good under WK rules, which generally tend to contort all logic and sense in order to keep any efficient power combination from actually functioning... I'd imagine there's some rubbish somewhere in a FAQ about how Incapacitation and Ranged Combat Expert are both Power Actions, so they can't be used together. But we don't have any truck with such idiocy in my House Rules; Dr. Light could certainly do an intensely effective energy attack that also momentarily Incapacitated a target by, say, blinding it.) Put an Armor Piercing on him and, well, yeah, he's now a 117 point figure, but he's hard to hit from range, and anything he points at either screams in pain or just plain dies.
And then he gets two clicks of Pulse Wave, which under my House Rules is a truly fabulous power... yeah, there's a lot to like in Dr. Light. And did I even mention the wild card Calculator TA that he and Captain Cold both share? All around, these are sweet, sweet figs... if only under my House Rules.
On the other hand, even my House Rules can't make the Trickster worth using. Well, sure, another Perplexer is always handy, but otherwise there's not much there. Yeah, yeah, his Plasticity/Poison combo could do some damage, especially with an Armor Piercing hung on him, but the problem there is, by the time it comes up he's down to a 14 defense value, which pretty much any piece of plastic or even most pogs can pummel at will. He's got some Energy Shield/Deflection in these slots, but he's really only effective in close combat, so it's not like that's much help. Maybe if they'd given him at least two targets, you could get some use out of his first click of Running Shot/Energy Explosion... but as it is, he's just a big lame loser. If I ever get a Reverse Flash I'll put Trickster out as part of a Rogue's Gallery team, and try to keep him back so I can use his Perplex... but I won't expect him to live long.
And, hey, guys, I'm just kidding about the baseball, gardening, and recipe entries. Post anything you want. Really. Maybe you'll end up getting more comments than I do... at least, on my HeroClix entries.
Sunday, March 19, 2006
Saturday, March 18, 2006
Hard sell
(with updates)
On my previous post, "Throw the bum out", I seemed to strike a chord, at least among my relatively small group of regular commenters. All of us seem to be in agreement -- the Democratic Party has been displaying nothing but weakness and worthlessness to the people who are still pinning their hopes on it.
Now, I'm not backsliding. I have no respect for the gutlessness the Dems are showing, and in fact, have been showing, ever since the Supreme Court bitchslapped Al Gore out of his rightful electoral victory. The shadows are growing long in our nation. Night is falling, and never has our country needed courageous, ethical, honorable leadership more than right now. Our rights and our liberties are being whittled away, little by little. We live in a country of free speech zones and unregulated government surveillance, where the people in power feel they can break the law with impunity, and are apparently correct. There are people locked up in American detainment facilities who have never been charged with a crime, who have never been allowed to speak to a lawyer, who have never had a trial... and at any given time, a few dozen of them are being tortured by people wearing the American flag. And we all know it. And we aren't doing anything about it, and neither are our elected representatives. And I expect no more from the ruling Republicans, who have revealed themselves, since coming to power, to be little more than a pack of lying, stealing, murderous, avaricious, power-glutted swine.
But I do expect more of the Democrats. Apparently we all do. And right now, and for the past five years, nearly all of the Democrats who still have a shred of power have been failing us utterly. At a time when we need them most, they have done the least, and there is no excuse, and I have no respect for it whatsoever.
Having said all that -- and again, bearing in mind I'm not making excuses -- it should be admitted, Democratic politicians have a considerably more difficult job to do than Republicans. Or at least, so it seems to me. This is why:
Republicans basically sell a very simple product: hate and fear. It is, therefore, not particularly difficult to, in the phraseology of the modern political playbook, energize the base. Anyone can stir up hate and fear in nearly anyone else; it's easy. All you have to do is point and scream. It takes an effort of will to rise above the basic, primal territorial tribalism that we all are prey to; many prefer not to even make that effort, and many others can be hectored into abandoning it with very little effort. So Republicans don't have a great deal of trouble getting out the vote; there is always a large target demographic willing to buy what they're selling, and the undecided swing voters are naturally inclined to rabid xenophobia, too.
Democrats, on the other hand, are pushing an entirely different bill of goods. Where Republicans are shilling hate and fear, Democrats are hawking hope and compassion. Where Republicans are the party of getting ours now and to hell with everyone who isn't a tribe member, Democrats have a progressive social vision that says if we all work together, we can make the world a better place... not just for a privileged few that we are all hoping to become part of, but for everyone.
This is a much tougher sell. It is far harder to energize your base with reason and empathy than it is with anger, prejudice, and exclusionism. And, in point of fact, most of the Democratic gains over the past century have come not from enlightened, progressive people who want to improve the world for all its residents, but from minorities who feel overlooked, and who are hitching their wagon to the Democratic Party because they hope to increase the power of their own particular tribe... in much the same way the white male Christian dominated base of the Republican party votes Republican because they feel that white male Christian social dominance has eroded over the course of the last century, and they want to restore it to what it once was.
Selfishness is an inherent and inescapable human vice, and it will always be a part of all human social interactions, including politics. Conservatism, and the Republican Party in particular, incorporate selfishness as one of their essential platform planks, but there are plenty of selfish, power hungry people in the Democratic Party, too. Such people do not do things for reasons of morality, ethics, social responsibility, or individual integrity. They bide their time, they choose their battlefields, they pick their fights, and all that other high minded sounding shit that essentially means, they never go against the odds, and in fact, they don't get suited up until their focus groups and pollsters and market analysts and policy advisers tell them the odds are overwhelmingly in their favor.
But, even understanding all of that, it should also be understood that the Democrats have some reason for being reluctant to take a stand at the moment. When a defense attorney has no case, the law isn't on his side, and the evidence against his client is overwhelming, he still has one vital element he can always rely on: the jury. And no matter how bad it seems to get for the Republicans, no matter how many of them are indicted or convicted, no matter what laws the Commander in Chief or his cronies break this week, no matter how many scandals there are, the Republicans can still rely on one thing -- it is easier to sell people hate and fear than it is to sell them compassion and hope.
I think the Democratic Party is being foolish and spineless, and I think it's going to bite them on the ass badly when elections roll around, because if there is one thing people hate above all others, it's a coward, and that is exactly what most of our elected Democratic politicians look like right now. Yet, having said all that, it must also be acknowledged -- it's harder to get elected, and stay elected, when you're running as a Democrat, than when you're running as a Republican. Which is probably why so many lazy lying cheating amoral backstabbing hypocritical pricks run for office as Republicans every year.
There is good news. Katherine Harris has just decided to stay in the race for Bill Nelson's Senate seat in Florida. This is good news because Harris' numbers are abysmal; since she was linked to illegal contributions from bribemeister Mitchell Wade, who was one of Duke Cunningham's favorite campaign supporters. The scandal is an especially good one because it not only points up Harris' utter lack of scruples, but also her bungling incompetence. After going to dinner with Wade and accepting stacks of illegal cash from him, Harris then put in a bid for him to get $10 million in government defense contracts -- but she missed the deadline, and he got no return on his money at all.
The Republican Party apparatus in Florida is apparently doing everything but putting out a contract on Harris to get her out of the race; they know she's poison, while Bill Nelson is still very popular in Florida. Recently Jeb Bush himself noted that Harris was going to have to make the race about Nelson -- his exact words were "I think for Congresswoman Harris to win, this has to stop being about her and has to start being about Senator Nelson and about the future of our country and the future of the state"... Republicanese for "she's got to go negative in a really big way on her opponent to have the remotest hope". The problem is, her opponent has a great deal more material for a negative campaign against Harris than she has against him.
Harris has so alienated her own party that she has found it impossible to do any decent fundraising; for that reason, she's decided to commit her entire personal fortune of 10 million dollars to the campaign. This is also good news; it should trigger a 2002 campaign-finance reform law that includes a "millionaires amendment" meant to help candidates whose opponents pump big money into their races.
This will allow Nelson to triple or even multiply by six times the usual limits of $2,100 per individual donation to his campaign.
Personally, I don't just want Katherine Harris out of elective politics, I want her in jail. But I'll settle for having her lose a very high profile state election; if she fails to pick up the Senate seat she's gunning for, she'll have lost her place in the House of Representatives, too. It's things like this that can give a party momentum.
UPDATE: Over here we see Cheney vigorously denying (a) that the Administration will be bringing in any new policy advisers to try and shore it up before the mid-terms, and (b) that anyone has asked him to step down from the VP slot so another (electable) high profile Republican could get a running start at the President's job from the Vice President spot.
The easy read of this is that Cheney is on his way out, and Dubya has already hand picked the next VP, who will be the presumed, and probably actual, Republican nominee for President in 2008.
My deeper (and no doubt more paranoid) read of this is that Cheney's blowing smoke in an entirely different way. By mentioning the 2008 Presidential elections so casually, he's trying to reassure us that there will be elections in 2008. I'm still more than half convinced that at some point before Bush's second term runs out, we'll see his Administration attempt to unilaterally declare martial law. This seems to be what they are laying the groundwork for; everything they've done over the past five years seems to be a consistent series of probing actions -- "Okay, they're willing to tolerate this if we wave the terrorism flag enough, now, let's see if they're willing to tolerate the next step". The ultimate end of this road for a group as power hungry as Bush's group is can only be absolute political power itself. Some people think Bush is going to try to repeal the 22nd Amendment and stay in office that way, but I personally doubt it... Bush is headstrong, arrogant, and doesn't like to listen to anything he doesn't want to hear, but even he has to realize he can't possibly be re-elected again. No, my suspicion is that a martial law declaration lies not too far in the future... probably shortly after mid-terms, if the Dems make big gains in Congress.
On my previous post, "Throw the bum out", I seemed to strike a chord, at least among my relatively small group of regular commenters. All of us seem to be in agreement -- the Democratic Party has been displaying nothing but weakness and worthlessness to the people who are still pinning their hopes on it.
Now, I'm not backsliding. I have no respect for the gutlessness the Dems are showing, and in fact, have been showing, ever since the Supreme Court bitchslapped Al Gore out of his rightful electoral victory. The shadows are growing long in our nation. Night is falling, and never has our country needed courageous, ethical, honorable leadership more than right now. Our rights and our liberties are being whittled away, little by little. We live in a country of free speech zones and unregulated government surveillance, where the people in power feel they can break the law with impunity, and are apparently correct. There are people locked up in American detainment facilities who have never been charged with a crime, who have never been allowed to speak to a lawyer, who have never had a trial... and at any given time, a few dozen of them are being tortured by people wearing the American flag. And we all know it. And we aren't doing anything about it, and neither are our elected representatives. And I expect no more from the ruling Republicans, who have revealed themselves, since coming to power, to be little more than a pack of lying, stealing, murderous, avaricious, power-glutted swine.
But I do expect more of the Democrats. Apparently we all do. And right now, and for the past five years, nearly all of the Democrats who still have a shred of power have been failing us utterly. At a time when we need them most, they have done the least, and there is no excuse, and I have no respect for it whatsoever.
Having said all that -- and again, bearing in mind I'm not making excuses -- it should be admitted, Democratic politicians have a considerably more difficult job to do than Republicans. Or at least, so it seems to me. This is why:
Republicans basically sell a very simple product: hate and fear. It is, therefore, not particularly difficult to, in the phraseology of the modern political playbook, energize the base. Anyone can stir up hate and fear in nearly anyone else; it's easy. All you have to do is point and scream. It takes an effort of will to rise above the basic, primal territorial tribalism that we all are prey to; many prefer not to even make that effort, and many others can be hectored into abandoning it with very little effort. So Republicans don't have a great deal of trouble getting out the vote; there is always a large target demographic willing to buy what they're selling, and the undecided swing voters are naturally inclined to rabid xenophobia, too.
Democrats, on the other hand, are pushing an entirely different bill of goods. Where Republicans are shilling hate and fear, Democrats are hawking hope and compassion. Where Republicans are the party of getting ours now and to hell with everyone who isn't a tribe member, Democrats have a progressive social vision that says if we all work together, we can make the world a better place... not just for a privileged few that we are all hoping to become part of, but for everyone.
This is a much tougher sell. It is far harder to energize your base with reason and empathy than it is with anger, prejudice, and exclusionism. And, in point of fact, most of the Democratic gains over the past century have come not from enlightened, progressive people who want to improve the world for all its residents, but from minorities who feel overlooked, and who are hitching their wagon to the Democratic Party because they hope to increase the power of their own particular tribe... in much the same way the white male Christian dominated base of the Republican party votes Republican because they feel that white male Christian social dominance has eroded over the course of the last century, and they want to restore it to what it once was.
Selfishness is an inherent and inescapable human vice, and it will always be a part of all human social interactions, including politics. Conservatism, and the Republican Party in particular, incorporate selfishness as one of their essential platform planks, but there are plenty of selfish, power hungry people in the Democratic Party, too. Such people do not do things for reasons of morality, ethics, social responsibility, or individual integrity. They bide their time, they choose their battlefields, they pick their fights, and all that other high minded sounding shit that essentially means, they never go against the odds, and in fact, they don't get suited up until their focus groups and pollsters and market analysts and policy advisers tell them the odds are overwhelmingly in their favor.
But, even understanding all of that, it should also be understood that the Democrats have some reason for being reluctant to take a stand at the moment. When a defense attorney has no case, the law isn't on his side, and the evidence against his client is overwhelming, he still has one vital element he can always rely on: the jury. And no matter how bad it seems to get for the Republicans, no matter how many of them are indicted or convicted, no matter what laws the Commander in Chief or his cronies break this week, no matter how many scandals there are, the Republicans can still rely on one thing -- it is easier to sell people hate and fear than it is to sell them compassion and hope.
I think the Democratic Party is being foolish and spineless, and I think it's going to bite them on the ass badly when elections roll around, because if there is one thing people hate above all others, it's a coward, and that is exactly what most of our elected Democratic politicians look like right now. Yet, having said all that, it must also be acknowledged -- it's harder to get elected, and stay elected, when you're running as a Democrat, than when you're running as a Republican. Which is probably why so many lazy lying cheating amoral backstabbing hypocritical pricks run for office as Republicans every year.
There is good news. Katherine Harris has just decided to stay in the race for Bill Nelson's Senate seat in Florida. This is good news because Harris' numbers are abysmal; since she was linked to illegal contributions from bribemeister Mitchell Wade, who was one of Duke Cunningham's favorite campaign supporters. The scandal is an especially good one because it not only points up Harris' utter lack of scruples, but also her bungling incompetence. After going to dinner with Wade and accepting stacks of illegal cash from him, Harris then put in a bid for him to get $10 million in government defense contracts -- but she missed the deadline, and he got no return on his money at all.
The Republican Party apparatus in Florida is apparently doing everything but putting out a contract on Harris to get her out of the race; they know she's poison, while Bill Nelson is still very popular in Florida. Recently Jeb Bush himself noted that Harris was going to have to make the race about Nelson -- his exact words were "I think for Congresswoman Harris to win, this has to stop being about her and has to start being about Senator Nelson and about the future of our country and the future of the state"... Republicanese for "she's got to go negative in a really big way on her opponent to have the remotest hope". The problem is, her opponent has a great deal more material for a negative campaign against Harris than she has against him.
Harris has so alienated her own party that she has found it impossible to do any decent fundraising; for that reason, she's decided to commit her entire personal fortune of 10 million dollars to the campaign. This is also good news; it should trigger a 2002 campaign-finance reform law that includes a "millionaires amendment" meant to help candidates whose opponents pump big money into their races.
This will allow Nelson to triple or even multiply by six times the usual limits of $2,100 per individual donation to his campaign.
Personally, I don't just want Katherine Harris out of elective politics, I want her in jail. But I'll settle for having her lose a very high profile state election; if she fails to pick up the Senate seat she's gunning for, she'll have lost her place in the House of Representatives, too. It's things like this that can give a party momentum.
UPDATE: Over here we see Cheney vigorously denying (a) that the Administration will be bringing in any new policy advisers to try and shore it up before the mid-terms, and (b) that anyone has asked him to step down from the VP slot so another (electable) high profile Republican could get a running start at the President's job from the Vice President spot.
The easy read of this is that Cheney is on his way out, and Dubya has already hand picked the next VP, who will be the presumed, and probably actual, Republican nominee for President in 2008.
My deeper (and no doubt more paranoid) read of this is that Cheney's blowing smoke in an entirely different way. By mentioning the 2008 Presidential elections so casually, he's trying to reassure us that there will be elections in 2008. I'm still more than half convinced that at some point before Bush's second term runs out, we'll see his Administration attempt to unilaterally declare martial law. This seems to be what they are laying the groundwork for; everything they've done over the past five years seems to be a consistent series of probing actions -- "Okay, they're willing to tolerate this if we wave the terrorism flag enough, now, let's see if they're willing to tolerate the next step". The ultimate end of this road for a group as power hungry as Bush's group is can only be absolute political power itself. Some people think Bush is going to try to repeal the 22nd Amendment and stay in office that way, but I personally doubt it... Bush is headstrong, arrogant, and doesn't like to listen to anything he doesn't want to hear, but even he has to realize he can't possibly be re-elected again. No, my suspicion is that a martial law declaration lies not too far in the future... probably shortly after mid-terms, if the Dems make big gains in Congress.
Phoning it in
So yesterday I got this call from a woman who lived in California. She started out pleasantly enough. "I'm having a problem getting one of my dependent care claims paid," she said, her tone even and well modulated. "I guess I need a little help with it."
So I said I'd be happy to do whatever I could for her and started looking at the claim... why it had been denied (insufficient documentation), which led me to look at the claim she'd submitted itself. She'd filled out the claim form correctly, as far as I could see, but instead of submitting an itemized receipt from her daycare provider, she'd sent us a page from a ledger/notebook with a detailed accounting of her childcare expenses for a month. Looking at the claim form, and at the page she'd sent, it was pretty clear both were in the same handwriting.
So I explained to her "Well, we need some kind of itemized receipt from your daycare provider. This is obviously a page detailing your expenses, but it's clear you made it yourself. That's not acceptable."
"Well," she said, her voice beginning to get just a tiny bit harder and colder, "I don't understand this. This is exactly what I've submitted every time prior to this and they've always paid it before."
Okay, now, here's a thing -- last year, the company I work for subcontracted all the claims processing to a different provider. That subcontractor decided the best way to make their quotas was simply to pay everything that wound up in front of them, which certainly made all our participants happy. However, it didn't make our actual clients (the employers of said participants, who get to keep any money in the accounts that the participant doesn't use by the end of the claim year) very pleased, and it didn't make the IRS very happy, so we fired those guys and now we do the claims processing in house, and pay a lot more attention to things like the client's guidelines and IRS regulations.
All of which means, all of us who take calls hear about what we did last year and how much better it was pretty much constantly, and frankly, speaking only for myself, I'm sick of it. I don't give a shit what happened last year, or what claims were paid prior to the one I'm being called about at the moment, or what a participant did or didn't send in Back In The Day, or any of that crap. Of course, we can't say that straight out to a participant, however badly they may need to hear it, we have to find a nice way to say it. Which I tried to to. But this woman wasn't having any of it.
"Well, look, I have a nanny," she exposited to me, her tone condescending to the point of sneering now, because, you know, clearly she understood that she was speaking to someone who had never had a nanny in his life and who Just Didn't Understand The Situation. "And she doesn't keep any books or give me a receipt. These are my own records of my expenses, for tax purposes, and they have always sufficed prior to this."
Okay, let me break for a moment and say something else: it is very important, when you call customer service, to try and get the customer service rep who takes your call on your side. There is always something a customer service rep can do for you, but often times these are peripheral things that are neither mandated nor forbidden by company policy, and it is entirely up to the rep in question whether they want to make the extra effort to help you. Sometimes the stuff they can do for you is strictly against the rules, but often times the system isn't monitored particularly well, and if you get the rep sympathizing with you, they'll be willing to go that extra mile to make your life a little easier.
However, none of that is going to happen if you piss the customer service rep off first thing. It amazes me that people don't seem to realize this, as it seems completely obvious to me, but still, people call me all the time with really shitty attitudes or start right out being nasty and mean and, well, those people lose me immediately. By treating me with disrespect, they have just guaranteed that they will get the absolute bare minimum I can get away with providing to them, and if I can get away with doing something to fuck them over, well, I'm going to do that, too. And after six months on a particular job, you get to be pretty adept at figuring out ways to do that.
Now, this woman hadn't been pissy enough with me at this point in the call that she'd moved to the "you get nothing but a hard way to go from me, bitch" list yet. But I will say this: when you call me about a problem you are having with your dependent care account, and you say the magic word 'nanny' to me, you have lost me. I am not on your side any more. Abruptly, you have become in my eyes an absentee parent, an affluent asshole who wants to have kids, but doesn't want to be bothered actually raising them. I have absolutely no respect for people who can't be troubled to raise their own children.
Still, I figured I had an easy way to help this woman, because dependent care really is pretty fool proof. And I might as well make her happy if it didn't cost me much. "Look, ma'am," I told her, keeping my tone friendly and supportive, "there's an easy solution to this. On your claim form, there's a place where your daycare provider -- your nanny, in this case -- can sign. It's the provider's signature blank, right under the affidavit. Just get your nanny to sign it and we don't need any supporting paperwork. We'll just pay the claim." And then I sat back, confident I was about to be showered with thanks and praise.
Well, as Cirocco Jones once noted to Conal Ray, never expect gratitude. There was a few seconds pause, and then, in the iciest and most exasperated tones imaginable, this aggravating bitch replies "That is VERY inconvenient."
Further note: Along with the word 'nanny', another magic word a participant can drop into the conversation that will completely alienate me from their cause is "inconvenient". I tell you this in truth, gentle readers -- I do not give a fuck if your tax free health reimbursement account is not being managed in a fashion you find convenient. You don't like it, pay your goddam taxes. Combine this with the fact that (a) this cunt is being snotty to me now and (b) she's got a fucking NANNY, and at this point, she's really got no shot of me doing anything whatsoever to help her with her problem.
However, after another very brief pause, Aggravating Bitch is going on "I fill these claims out at work and submit them from there. There are times I don't even see my nanny for... look. It's just extremely inconvenient. I have submitted these claims with this documentation for the last year and there has never been a problem before."
Now I'm just fed up with her, so I tell her "Well, apparently the processing department has a problem with it now, and based on my experience, I will tell you that they are not going to consider this adequate documentation."
At this point, she's realized that she just isn't getting anywhere with me, so she goes to the last resort of those who are certain they are entitled to get their way regardless of minor, trivial annoyances like, you know, the law: "This is unacceptable. Let me speak to a supervisor."
So I said, sweetly, "Absolutely, ma'am, please hold for a moment while I get one." Then I looked at my list of supervisors, picked out one I knew was home sick that day, and transferred Aggravating Bitch into her voicemail.
Then I took another call, and then the one after that beeped in, and it was Aggravating Bitch again. "I just spoke to you," she said, snidely. "You put me into a supervisor's voicemail. That is unacceptable. I need to speak to a real person now to get this resolved."
"Absolutely, ma'am," I assured her. Then I transferred her into the voicemail of someone who hasn't worked for my company for months.
After that, I don't know what happened to her.
Now, I'm normally and naturally a very gullible person... I tend to just, instinctively and without thought, believe whatever people tell me. It isn't until later that, in retrospect and hindsight, I figure out that there must be more going on that what was actually stated on the surface. In this case, though, well, having thought about it some more, I have to say, I think this woman is doing something she shouldn't be doing. After all, how hard is it to get your nanny to sign a claim form? No, she's doing something she knows isn't kosher here... her nanny is being paid under the table (maybe she's an illegal) or maybe she isn't paying for her childcare for some reason, or... something. Whatever the case, something stinks about the whole situation. Which is good, since it probably means she won't complain to any of my supervisors about me.
So I said I'd be happy to do whatever I could for her and started looking at the claim... why it had been denied (insufficient documentation), which led me to look at the claim she'd submitted itself. She'd filled out the claim form correctly, as far as I could see, but instead of submitting an itemized receipt from her daycare provider, she'd sent us a page from a ledger/notebook with a detailed accounting of her childcare expenses for a month. Looking at the claim form, and at the page she'd sent, it was pretty clear both were in the same handwriting.
So I explained to her "Well, we need some kind of itemized receipt from your daycare provider. This is obviously a page detailing your expenses, but it's clear you made it yourself. That's not acceptable."
"Well," she said, her voice beginning to get just a tiny bit harder and colder, "I don't understand this. This is exactly what I've submitted every time prior to this and they've always paid it before."
Okay, now, here's a thing -- last year, the company I work for subcontracted all the claims processing to a different provider. That subcontractor decided the best way to make their quotas was simply to pay everything that wound up in front of them, which certainly made all our participants happy. However, it didn't make our actual clients (the employers of said participants, who get to keep any money in the accounts that the participant doesn't use by the end of the claim year) very pleased, and it didn't make the IRS very happy, so we fired those guys and now we do the claims processing in house, and pay a lot more attention to things like the client's guidelines and IRS regulations.
All of which means, all of us who take calls hear about what we did last year and how much better it was pretty much constantly, and frankly, speaking only for myself, I'm sick of it. I don't give a shit what happened last year, or what claims were paid prior to the one I'm being called about at the moment, or what a participant did or didn't send in Back In The Day, or any of that crap. Of course, we can't say that straight out to a participant, however badly they may need to hear it, we have to find a nice way to say it. Which I tried to to. But this woman wasn't having any of it.
"Well, look, I have a nanny," she exposited to me, her tone condescending to the point of sneering now, because, you know, clearly she understood that she was speaking to someone who had never had a nanny in his life and who Just Didn't Understand The Situation. "And she doesn't keep any books or give me a receipt. These are my own records of my expenses, for tax purposes, and they have always sufficed prior to this."
Okay, let me break for a moment and say something else: it is very important, when you call customer service, to try and get the customer service rep who takes your call on your side. There is always something a customer service rep can do for you, but often times these are peripheral things that are neither mandated nor forbidden by company policy, and it is entirely up to the rep in question whether they want to make the extra effort to help you. Sometimes the stuff they can do for you is strictly against the rules, but often times the system isn't monitored particularly well, and if you get the rep sympathizing with you, they'll be willing to go that extra mile to make your life a little easier.
However, none of that is going to happen if you piss the customer service rep off first thing. It amazes me that people don't seem to realize this, as it seems completely obvious to me, but still, people call me all the time with really shitty attitudes or start right out being nasty and mean and, well, those people lose me immediately. By treating me with disrespect, they have just guaranteed that they will get the absolute bare minimum I can get away with providing to them, and if I can get away with doing something to fuck them over, well, I'm going to do that, too. And after six months on a particular job, you get to be pretty adept at figuring out ways to do that.
Now, this woman hadn't been pissy enough with me at this point in the call that she'd moved to the "you get nothing but a hard way to go from me, bitch" list yet. But I will say this: when you call me about a problem you are having with your dependent care account, and you say the magic word 'nanny' to me, you have lost me. I am not on your side any more. Abruptly, you have become in my eyes an absentee parent, an affluent asshole who wants to have kids, but doesn't want to be bothered actually raising them. I have absolutely no respect for people who can't be troubled to raise their own children.
Still, I figured I had an easy way to help this woman, because dependent care really is pretty fool proof. And I might as well make her happy if it didn't cost me much. "Look, ma'am," I told her, keeping my tone friendly and supportive, "there's an easy solution to this. On your claim form, there's a place where your daycare provider -- your nanny, in this case -- can sign. It's the provider's signature blank, right under the affidavit. Just get your nanny to sign it and we don't need any supporting paperwork. We'll just pay the claim." And then I sat back, confident I was about to be showered with thanks and praise.
Well, as Cirocco Jones once noted to Conal Ray, never expect gratitude. There was a few seconds pause, and then, in the iciest and most exasperated tones imaginable, this aggravating bitch replies "That is VERY inconvenient."
Further note: Along with the word 'nanny', another magic word a participant can drop into the conversation that will completely alienate me from their cause is "inconvenient". I tell you this in truth, gentle readers -- I do not give a fuck if your tax free health reimbursement account is not being managed in a fashion you find convenient. You don't like it, pay your goddam taxes. Combine this with the fact that (a) this cunt is being snotty to me now and (b) she's got a fucking NANNY, and at this point, she's really got no shot of me doing anything whatsoever to help her with her problem.
However, after another very brief pause, Aggravating Bitch is going on "I fill these claims out at work and submit them from there. There are times I don't even see my nanny for... look. It's just extremely inconvenient. I have submitted these claims with this documentation for the last year and there has never been a problem before."
Now I'm just fed up with her, so I tell her "Well, apparently the processing department has a problem with it now, and based on my experience, I will tell you that they are not going to consider this adequate documentation."
At this point, she's realized that she just isn't getting anywhere with me, so she goes to the last resort of those who are certain they are entitled to get their way regardless of minor, trivial annoyances like, you know, the law: "This is unacceptable. Let me speak to a supervisor."
So I said, sweetly, "Absolutely, ma'am, please hold for a moment while I get one." Then I looked at my list of supervisors, picked out one I knew was home sick that day, and transferred Aggravating Bitch into her voicemail.
Then I took another call, and then the one after that beeped in, and it was Aggravating Bitch again. "I just spoke to you," she said, snidely. "You put me into a supervisor's voicemail. That is unacceptable. I need to speak to a real person now to get this resolved."
"Absolutely, ma'am," I assured her. Then I transferred her into the voicemail of someone who hasn't worked for my company for months.
After that, I don't know what happened to her.
Now, I'm normally and naturally a very gullible person... I tend to just, instinctively and without thought, believe whatever people tell me. It isn't until later that, in retrospect and hindsight, I figure out that there must be more going on that what was actually stated on the surface. In this case, though, well, having thought about it some more, I have to say, I think this woman is doing something she shouldn't be doing. After all, how hard is it to get your nanny to sign a claim form? No, she's doing something she knows isn't kosher here... her nanny is being paid under the table (maybe she's an illegal) or maybe she isn't paying for her childcare for some reason, or... something. Whatever the case, something stinks about the whole situation. Which is good, since it probably means she won't complain to any of my supervisors about me.
Thursday, March 16, 2006
Throw the bum out
See, I read some political blogs, and I'm aware that compared to folks like Glenn Greenwald, Josh Marshall, and Kevin Drum, I know little and am not particularly bright. But, on the other hand, that doesn't stop John Rogers from running his pie hole, so why should it stop me?
Lately, I was amused and appalled to see both Kevin Drum and now Josh Marshall sort of half assedly and lackadaisically seem to come out kind of more or less not in favor... but we can't be sure, because they seem pretty carefully non-committal about it... of Senator Feingold's recent move to censure that idiot sitting in Al Gore's office, for, you know, petty little stuff like breaking the law and spying on American citizens without a warrant.
Drum and Marshall seem to be (consciously or not) reflecting the public stance of the majority of Democratic elected officials at the moment. They're not really against the idea of censuring Bush... I mean, you know, he did break the law and stuff... it's probably not a bad idea... but... well... would they vote for it? Maybe... but they'd like to wait and get more information and probably see a few thousand more polls and when 85% of the American public finally says they'd like to see Bush censured, well, then, sure, they'd come out in support of it.
Glenn Greenwald threw a blog-grenade at Drum for his wimpy half-assedness on the subject yesterday, and he's been beating the drums for weeks now about how sad, shabby, and generally pathetic our current crop of elected Democrats is... with Bush's approval rating in free fall (and continually finding new low points every time someone does a poll), with the American people stating by large majorities that they believe he broke the law and they don't want the government spying on them without judicial oversight, with seemingly every Republican in office in America apparently about to be indicted for something, still, leading lights of the Democratic Party like Hilary Clinton and Barak Obama don't dare to say a word against Fearless Leader on security grounds. "Oh, that's a Republican issue," their advisors warn them earnestly. "Oh, we can't beat them on that. Oh, if we say anything about the spying then we're soft on terror."
When Kevin Drum published a piece on his blog more or less vacillating and equivocating about Feingold's censure motion, but seeming to generally indicate that Drum doesn't think it's a terribly good idea right now, Glenn let him have it both barrels. Which was strange to me, because I think both of them are among the best lefty poli-bloggers we have, so watching them square off was, to me, kind of like seeing Captain America take a swing at Daredevil or something.
For what little it's worth, I think Feingold's move to censure Bush is a damn fine one, it just doesn't go far enough. I think Democrats ought to be doing everything right up to and including setting the Capitol Building on fire in an effort to get Bush impeached.
Now, Josh Marshall has a column in The Hill right now listing all his reasons why we shouldn't be trying to impeach that murderous moron Bush at the moment, and Josh Marshall is much much more politically experienced and informed than I am, and I imagine he's got eighteen different post graduate degrees and his IQ is no doubt 70 points higher than mine and he's probably the real world equivalent of Josh Lyman or Sam Seaborne and I should just shut up. But I'm not going to.
See, Marshall's reasons why we shouldn't be trying to impeach Bush right now boil down to this -- impeachment is meant to be an extraordinary means for reigning in an out of control President. It is the last resort, after the other branches of government have exhausted every other means they have of getting such a President back in hand. And Marshall feels that Congress, and the judiciary, not only haven't exhausted all their means of trying to bring the President back into line with Constitutional principles, they actually haven't really even started trying yet. That being the case, it's much too soon to talk about impeachment, when there are many other avenues left for Congress and the judiciary to explore in an attempt to stop crazy ass Dubya and his cronies from running amok and continuing to use the Constitution for toilet paper.
See, I understand this argument, and to an extent I respect it, but at the same time, well, it's an argument about principle and high ideals and the way things oughtta be, and frankly, at this moment, that shit ain't getting it done. Marshall claims that impeachment is a quick fix and ultimately a bad idea and would set a bad precedent. I say, any fix works for me right now... and as far as I can see, short of getting Bush AND all his avaricious power hungry buddies in the same room at the same time and then taking the only sane, reasonable, moral course possible with an M203 grenade launcher, impeachment is the ONLY thing that's going to work.
I say all this for one simple reason: nobody in Bush's administration is fretting about the law right now. Is Scooter Libby worried he's going to jail? No. Is Karl Rove breaking a sweat about blowing a CIA agent's cover? Of course not. Is Dick Cheney's asshole all puckered up in terror at the thought of what some Secret Service agent might blurt out about the investigation into his hunting accident? Don't make me laugh. Why aren't any of them afraid of any of this shit? Well, it's not because they haven't knowingly and happily jumped up and down on about eight dozen different laws while getting drunk, sleeping around, and lining their pockets with war profits and misappropriated tax dollars, certainly not. The reason they are not worried is a simple one: if they ever got indicted, arrested, tried, and convicted of anything (which isn't very likely; Cheney just SHOT A GUY IN THE FACE WHILE STINKING DRUNK, and WE ALL KNOW IT, and nobody so much as ticketed the malevolent prick for it)... even if that should, against all odds and expectations, actually happen... well... Dubya will just pardon them for it.
Excuse me? You don't think he'd do that? I'm sorry, why? Is he planning on running for office again? You think he's worried about his approval ratings, or something?
The only way we get around this is to impeach him. Have Congress hold a trial, find him guilty, and strip him of his office. Then he loses all executive immunity, so he can be arrested and put on criminal trial, but more importantly, then we can indict, arrest, and try the rest of the gang, too, because Bush will not have the power to pardon them.
The timing is tricky. It would be extremely useful if Cheney were indicted for something before Bush is impeached. In fact, it would be fabulous if everyone in Bush's administration were indicted for something, and forced to resign, before Bush is impeached. I remember reading somewhere that Bush has signed several executive orders over the past year substantially changing the Constitutional order of succession, but I can't seem to find any details, so at this point, I have no idea who becomes President if Bush is impeached and Cheney is no longer in line... I'm just pretty sure that whoever it is, it isn't anyone I want in office... and if Bush has hand selected whoever it is via executive order, it's most likely someone who will pardon Bush if push comes to shove.
So, it's important we do things in the right order. First, we arrest any Republican who might possibly be in the line of succession to Bush. It's a tall order, but I'm confident they're all guilty of something. We just need about fifteen more Patrick Fitzgeralds on the case. Then, when they've all been forced to resign their offices in disgrace, before interim elections can be held or the governors can send any more corrupt frickin' Republicans to take their places, we impeach Bush. (It should be easy; with all those Republicans under arrest, the Democrats will have a clear majority in both branches of Congress.)
Okay, I know it's a pipe dream, but, still, if you don't have good dreams, Bagel, you got nightmares, right?
Having typed all this, let me close by saying, I have never in my life wanted to see a viable third party in American politics more than right now. I am completely with Glenn Greenwald on this; the way Democrats are reacting to an unprecedented Constitutional crisis, and a nearly complete meltdown on the part of the Republicans, is disgraceful, shameful, embarrassing, and humiliating to anyone who has ever voted the D ticket.
Here's a quote from Greenwald's recent entry on it:
Let us begin with these profiles in courage from your leading Democratic Senators, showing the nation how strong and tough they are:
"I haven't read it," demurred Barack Obama (Ill.).
"I just don't have enough information," protested Ben Nelson (Neb.). "I really can't right now," John Kerry (Mass.) said as he hurried past a knot of reporters -- an excuse that fell apart when Kerry was forced into an awkward wait as Capitol Police stopped an aide at the magnetometer.
Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) brushed past the press pack, shaking her head and waving her hand over her shoulder. When an errant food cart blocked her entrance to the meeting room, she tried to hide from reporters behind the 4-foot-11 Barbara Mikulski (Md.). . . .
So nonplused were Democrats that even Sen. Charles Schumer (N.Y.), known for his near-daily news conferences, made history by declaring, "I'm not going to comment." Would he have a comment later? "I dunno," the suddenly shy senator said.
Republicans were grateful for the gift. The office of Sen. John Cornyn (Tex.) put a new "daily feature" on its Web site monitoring the censure resolution: "Democrat co-sponsors of Feingold Resolution: 0." . . .
Many of Feingold's Democratic colleagues agree that Bush abused his authority with the NSA spying program. And they know liberal Democratic activists are eager to see Bush censured, or worse. But they also know Feingold's maneuver could cost them seats in GOP states. . . .
"Most of us feel at best it's premature," announced Sen. Christopher Dodd (Conn.). "I don't think anyone can say with any certainty at this juncture that what happened is illegal."
I swear to God, if Democrats keep acting like this, I will damned well vote for Ralph AGAIN next time.
Lately, I was amused and appalled to see both Kevin Drum and now Josh Marshall sort of half assedly and lackadaisically seem to come out kind of more or less not in favor... but we can't be sure, because they seem pretty carefully non-committal about it... of Senator Feingold's recent move to censure that idiot sitting in Al Gore's office, for, you know, petty little stuff like breaking the law and spying on American citizens without a warrant.
Drum and Marshall seem to be (consciously or not) reflecting the public stance of the majority of Democratic elected officials at the moment. They're not really against the idea of censuring Bush... I mean, you know, he did break the law and stuff... it's probably not a bad idea... but... well... would they vote for it? Maybe... but they'd like to wait and get more information and probably see a few thousand more polls and when 85% of the American public finally says they'd like to see Bush censured, well, then, sure, they'd come out in support of it.
Glenn Greenwald threw a blog-grenade at Drum for his wimpy half-assedness on the subject yesterday, and he's been beating the drums for weeks now about how sad, shabby, and generally pathetic our current crop of elected Democrats is... with Bush's approval rating in free fall (and continually finding new low points every time someone does a poll), with the American people stating by large majorities that they believe he broke the law and they don't want the government spying on them without judicial oversight, with seemingly every Republican in office in America apparently about to be indicted for something, still, leading lights of the Democratic Party like Hilary Clinton and Barak Obama don't dare to say a word against Fearless Leader on security grounds. "Oh, that's a Republican issue," their advisors warn them earnestly. "Oh, we can't beat them on that. Oh, if we say anything about the spying then we're soft on terror."
When Kevin Drum published a piece on his blog more or less vacillating and equivocating about Feingold's censure motion, but seeming to generally indicate that Drum doesn't think it's a terribly good idea right now, Glenn let him have it both barrels. Which was strange to me, because I think both of them are among the best lefty poli-bloggers we have, so watching them square off was, to me, kind of like seeing Captain America take a swing at Daredevil or something.
For what little it's worth, I think Feingold's move to censure Bush is a damn fine one, it just doesn't go far enough. I think Democrats ought to be doing everything right up to and including setting the Capitol Building on fire in an effort to get Bush impeached.
Now, Josh Marshall has a column in The Hill right now listing all his reasons why we shouldn't be trying to impeach that murderous moron Bush at the moment, and Josh Marshall is much much more politically experienced and informed than I am, and I imagine he's got eighteen different post graduate degrees and his IQ is no doubt 70 points higher than mine and he's probably the real world equivalent of Josh Lyman or Sam Seaborne and I should just shut up. But I'm not going to.
See, Marshall's reasons why we shouldn't be trying to impeach Bush right now boil down to this -- impeachment is meant to be an extraordinary means for reigning in an out of control President. It is the last resort, after the other branches of government have exhausted every other means they have of getting such a President back in hand. And Marshall feels that Congress, and the judiciary, not only haven't exhausted all their means of trying to bring the President back into line with Constitutional principles, they actually haven't really even started trying yet. That being the case, it's much too soon to talk about impeachment, when there are many other avenues left for Congress and the judiciary to explore in an attempt to stop crazy ass Dubya and his cronies from running amok and continuing to use the Constitution for toilet paper.
See, I understand this argument, and to an extent I respect it, but at the same time, well, it's an argument about principle and high ideals and the way things oughtta be, and frankly, at this moment, that shit ain't getting it done. Marshall claims that impeachment is a quick fix and ultimately a bad idea and would set a bad precedent. I say, any fix works for me right now... and as far as I can see, short of getting Bush AND all his avaricious power hungry buddies in the same room at the same time and then taking the only sane, reasonable, moral course possible with an M203 grenade launcher, impeachment is the ONLY thing that's going to work.
I say all this for one simple reason: nobody in Bush's administration is fretting about the law right now. Is Scooter Libby worried he's going to jail? No. Is Karl Rove breaking a sweat about blowing a CIA agent's cover? Of course not. Is Dick Cheney's asshole all puckered up in terror at the thought of what some Secret Service agent might blurt out about the investigation into his hunting accident? Don't make me laugh. Why aren't any of them afraid of any of this shit? Well, it's not because they haven't knowingly and happily jumped up and down on about eight dozen different laws while getting drunk, sleeping around, and lining their pockets with war profits and misappropriated tax dollars, certainly not. The reason they are not worried is a simple one: if they ever got indicted, arrested, tried, and convicted of anything (which isn't very likely; Cheney just SHOT A GUY IN THE FACE WHILE STINKING DRUNK, and WE ALL KNOW IT, and nobody so much as ticketed the malevolent prick for it)... even if that should, against all odds and expectations, actually happen... well... Dubya will just pardon them for it.
Excuse me? You don't think he'd do that? I'm sorry, why? Is he planning on running for office again? You think he's worried about his approval ratings, or something?
The only way we get around this is to impeach him. Have Congress hold a trial, find him guilty, and strip him of his office. Then he loses all executive immunity, so he can be arrested and put on criminal trial, but more importantly, then we can indict, arrest, and try the rest of the gang, too, because Bush will not have the power to pardon them.
The timing is tricky. It would be extremely useful if Cheney were indicted for something before Bush is impeached. In fact, it would be fabulous if everyone in Bush's administration were indicted for something, and forced to resign, before Bush is impeached. I remember reading somewhere that Bush has signed several executive orders over the past year substantially changing the Constitutional order of succession, but I can't seem to find any details, so at this point, I have no idea who becomes President if Bush is impeached and Cheney is no longer in line... I'm just pretty sure that whoever it is, it isn't anyone I want in office... and if Bush has hand selected whoever it is via executive order, it's most likely someone who will pardon Bush if push comes to shove.
So, it's important we do things in the right order. First, we arrest any Republican who might possibly be in the line of succession to Bush. It's a tall order, but I'm confident they're all guilty of something. We just need about fifteen more Patrick Fitzgeralds on the case. Then, when they've all been forced to resign their offices in disgrace, before interim elections can be held or the governors can send any more corrupt frickin' Republicans to take their places, we impeach Bush. (It should be easy; with all those Republicans under arrest, the Democrats will have a clear majority in both branches of Congress.)
Okay, I know it's a pipe dream, but, still, if you don't have good dreams, Bagel, you got nightmares, right?
Having typed all this, let me close by saying, I have never in my life wanted to see a viable third party in American politics more than right now. I am completely with Glenn Greenwald on this; the way Democrats are reacting to an unprecedented Constitutional crisis, and a nearly complete meltdown on the part of the Republicans, is disgraceful, shameful, embarrassing, and humiliating to anyone who has ever voted the D ticket.
Here's a quote from Greenwald's recent entry on it:
Let us begin with these profiles in courage from your leading Democratic Senators, showing the nation how strong and tough they are:
"I just don't have enough information," protested Ben Nelson (Neb.). "I really can't right now," John Kerry (Mass.) said as he hurried past a knot of reporters -- an excuse that fell apart when Kerry was forced into an awkward wait as Capitol Police stopped an aide at the magnetometer.
Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) brushed past the press pack, shaking her head and waving her hand over her shoulder. When an errant food cart blocked her entrance to the meeting room, she tried to hide from reporters behind the 4-foot-11 Barbara Mikulski (Md.). . . .
So nonplused were Democrats that even Sen. Charles Schumer (N.Y.), known for his near-daily news conferences, made history by declaring, "I'm not going to comment." Would he have a comment later? "I dunno," the suddenly shy senator said.
Republicans were grateful for the gift. The office of Sen. John Cornyn (Tex.) put a new "daily feature" on its Web site monitoring the censure resolution: "Democrat co-sponsors of Feingold Resolution: 0." . . .
Many of Feingold's Democratic colleagues agree that Bush abused his authority with the NSA spying program. And they know liberal Democratic activists are eager to see Bush censured, or worse. But they also know Feingold's maneuver could cost them seats in GOP states. . . .
"Most of us feel at best it's premature," announced Sen. Christopher Dodd (Conn.). "I don't think anyone can say with any certainty at this juncture that what happened is illegal."
I swear to God, if Democrats keep acting like this, I will damned well vote for Ralph AGAIN next time.
Tuesday, March 14, 2006
No, no, you jugheads!
With Counting Crows belting out "Accidentally in Love" from the Windows Media Player (Super Dependable Teen recently discovered a feature where you can type in any song title and/or performer's name and have a decent chance of a copy of the song start playing; God, I love living in the future), here I am, discovering how easy it is to hate reality shortly after the alarm goes off.
But it gets harder when you're listening to something this damn perky, I grant you.
These lines of lightning mean we're never alone,
never alone, no no
come on, come on, move a little closer
come on, come on, I wanna hear you whisper
come on, come on, settle down inside my love
come on, come on, jump a little higher
come on, come on, feel a little lighter
come on, come on, you were once upon a time in love
accidentally in love...
come on, come on, spin a little tighter
come on, come on, the world's a little brighter
come on, come on, get yourself inside my love...
Yeah, I'm a sap sometimes. Y'all will just have to deal.
I haven't been begging people to go over and vote for me in the the Koufax Awards, mostly because I forgot, and now the first round voting is over, but also because it seems like an exercise in futility, when you have blogs like Kung Fu Monkey, with thousands of readers, hectoring their 'minions' to go vote for them, instead. So, I wound up with one nomination (my own) and one vote (ditto) and I'll settle for that... this year. But next year, if I'm still alive and blogging, expect me to be more on the ball, and begging my three or four readers here to go over there and nominate me for everything conceivable, and then vote for me when they get a chance, too. Because it's all about attention, and I'm as attention starved as anyone.
I'm probably going to declare April an open month here at the blog, and ask all my individual blog members to do at least one guest post. I can't imagine it will help revive the moribund comment threads here even if folks comply, but it seems like something to do that might be vaguely cool.
I have just updated my HeroClix House Rules reasonably extensively, adding one line to the super power Willpower (it will now aid a fig somewhat in fighting off Mind Control attacks) and tossing in quite a bit of new stuff regarding Battlefield Conditions and Feat Cards. At first I was just going to take the opportunity to explain how we do BCs around here, where we use them as random disruptive elements rather than deliberate tactical intrusions, and maybe do a paragraph on how my House Rules have impacted the Feat Card Fortitude. But then I got all wild eyed and crazy and started tweaking several Feat Cards, making much needed changes to Swingline and Taunt, and even trying hard to do something useful with Slippery (I made it a free add on to all Serpent Society members, giving it and them a badly needed little bonus that still won't help all that much).
After thinking hard about it, I left Pounce pretty much alone, which means that it's still useless under my system, where everyone can move and attack anyway.
And that's about it here in the Highlands. Although let me note that everyone who isn't reading and leaving comments at SuperGirlfriend's blog is just plain wrong. My stuff is often pathetic and pointless, I grant you, but she's always worth reading and responding to.
But it gets harder when you're listening to something this damn perky, I grant you.
These lines of lightning mean we're never alone,
never alone, no no
come on, come on, move a little closer
come on, come on, I wanna hear you whisper
come on, come on, settle down inside my love
come on, come on, jump a little higher
come on, come on, feel a little lighter
come on, come on, you were once upon a time in love
accidentally in love...
come on, come on, spin a little tighter
come on, come on, the world's a little brighter
come on, come on, get yourself inside my love...
Yeah, I'm a sap sometimes. Y'all will just have to deal.
I haven't been begging people to go over and vote for me in the the Koufax Awards, mostly because I forgot, and now the first round voting is over, but also because it seems like an exercise in futility, when you have blogs like Kung Fu Monkey, with thousands of readers, hectoring their 'minions' to go vote for them, instead. So, I wound up with one nomination (my own) and one vote (ditto) and I'll settle for that... this year. But next year, if I'm still alive and blogging, expect me to be more on the ball, and begging my three or four readers here to go over there and nominate me for everything conceivable, and then vote for me when they get a chance, too. Because it's all about attention, and I'm as attention starved as anyone.
I'm probably going to declare April an open month here at the blog, and ask all my individual blog members to do at least one guest post. I can't imagine it will help revive the moribund comment threads here even if folks comply, but it seems like something to do that might be vaguely cool.
I have just updated my HeroClix House Rules reasonably extensively, adding one line to the super power Willpower (it will now aid a fig somewhat in fighting off Mind Control attacks) and tossing in quite a bit of new stuff regarding Battlefield Conditions and Feat Cards. At first I was just going to take the opportunity to explain how we do BCs around here, where we use them as random disruptive elements rather than deliberate tactical intrusions, and maybe do a paragraph on how my House Rules have impacted the Feat Card Fortitude. But then I got all wild eyed and crazy and started tweaking several Feat Cards, making much needed changes to Swingline and Taunt, and even trying hard to do something useful with Slippery (I made it a free add on to all Serpent Society members, giving it and them a badly needed little bonus that still won't help all that much).
After thinking hard about it, I left Pounce pretty much alone, which means that it's still useless under my system, where everyone can move and attack anyway.
And that's about it here in the Highlands. Although let me note that everyone who isn't reading and leaving comments at SuperGirlfriend's blog is just plain wrong. My stuff is often pathetic and pointless, I grant you, but she's always worth reading and responding to.
Friday, March 10, 2006
Katie lived
This is my blog's first guest post since SuperGirlfriend did one a few months back, and it pretty much speaks for itself, so I'm just going to say, here is my good friend and frequent commenter Scott S., he's going to be telling us about his daughter Katie's recently concluded struggle with cancer, it's an amazing story -- and here he is:
"The smell of hospitals in winter
and the feeling
that it's all a lot of oysters
and no pearls." I don't think the smell of hospitals will ever leave me.
Katie was diagnosed August 26, 2003. She was nearly 3 and a half years old. She'll turn 6 on April 22nd.
She was sent to the hospital for blood tests on the advice of our family doctor, as a result of some odd bruising that had appeared on her back and torso.
The blood tests showed high white blood cell counts and led to further tests. An x-ray showed that Katie's liver and spleen were enlarged. Both of these are classic symptoms of leukemia.
Leukemia means, literally, "white blood". There are three types of blood cells that all people have - red blood cells that carry oxygen to the body, platelets which help with blood clotting, and white blood cells, which defend the body from infection and disease. All these cells are grown in the bone marrow, and are pushed into the blood stream as necessary. What happens with leukemia is that a white blood cell (called a lymphoblast,or blast, for short), instead of developing into a useful disease or bacteria fighting cell, mutates. This cancer cell does nothing useful; it simply multiplies, and multiplies... and multiplies. These blasts fill up the bone marrow, so that the marrow can no longer produce red blood cells, or platelets, or even useful white blood cells. The immune system becomes suppressed, and the body becomes more susceptible to infection, and with lowered platelet counts, bruising and internal bleeding become risks as well (those weird bruises, called patichia).
Eventually, they leak out into the blood stream and multiply again, hence -"white blood".
The liver and spleen become enlarged trying to cope with these mutant cells. Elevated amounts of white blood cells show up in a blood test.
Of course, a virus will also cause elevated white cell counts, and some viruses even eat platelets. An enlarged liver and spleen can be caused by mono. The only conclusive test for leukemia is a bone marrow aspiration (BMA), in which a needle is inserted into a marrow rich bone (usually the hip bone), and some marrow withdrawn.
Katie was admitted to the hospital that night. The mono test came back negative, so she was scheduled for a BMA the next day.
The BMA showed a marrow that was 99% white blood cells - a confirmation that the cause was leukemia.
They also performed a lumbar puncture (LP) - basically a spinal tap - in which they insert a needle into the base of Katie's spine and draw out some spinal fluid, to check for the presence of blasts in the CNS. Thankfully, this test came back clear, which meant no radiation therapy.
The official diagnosis was Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia, or ALL Leukemia is the most common type of childhood cancer, with around 4000 children diagnosed in the U.S every year. Ironically, because it is so common, it is also the cancer with the highest long term survival rates - around 80% overall, and more than 90% for some types.
The specific type of ALL depends on the kind of white cell that was mutated. There are leukemic cell lines - B and T. The treatment regime, or protocol is determined by the type of cell, along with other factors present at diagnosis. The three types of ALL are precursor B (pre-B), B, and T. Pre-B has the highest survival rate, T the lowest. Other risk (risk meaning risk of relapse) factors include age (infants have a very poor prognosis, as do children older than about 8 or 9), gender (girls have overall better survival rates than boys), the number of white blood cells present at diagnosis, and the specific genetic properties of the cancer cell in question. The technical diagnosis was pre-B ALL.
Katie's age, gender, and the genetic makeup of the cancer cells put her in what was considered the "low risk" category.
So basically, if she had to get cancer, she got the best kind.
At the time of Katie's diagnosis, there were at least two different organizations that had documented treatment protocols for leukemia - POG (Pediatric Oncology Group) and CCG (Children's Cancer Group). Whether you got a POG protocol or a CCG protocol depended in large part on where you lived and who your Oncologist was. Both types of protocols use the same drugs, for the most part, just in different combinations and at different times. However, the CCG protocols do not have a "low risk" category - a child is either "standard risk" or "high risk".
CHEO uses the POG protocols (or rather *used* the POG protocols - the two organizations have since merged their protocols into one agreed upon set), so Katie was put on a low risk protocol.
The low risk protocol is divided into three stages - induction, consolidation, and maintenance. Treatment starts immediately upon being diagnosed.
The induction phase is the most intensive of the three stages. The goal of induction is to wipe out as much of the cancer as possible, and so Katie was bombarded with at least 5 different drugs. The treatment started immediately. The drugs she got during this first phase included a ridiculously high dose of a steroid called dexamethasone, vincristine, L-asparaginase, cytarabine, methotrexate and daunorubicin. Most of these were were either injected via needle or put in through an IV.
Most chemotherapy drugs work by either killing off fast-reproducing cells, or disrupting their ability to reproduce. A side effect of virtually all of them is nausea and vomiting. Unfortunately, that is not the only side effect.
For Katie, the worst drugs in terms of side effects were the dex and the vincristine. These, she had regularly. The other drugs, with the exception of the methotrexate, were one-time doses during the first month.
The steroid caused extreme emotional volatility ('roid rage...in a three year old), fatigue, hugely increased appetite, muscle soreness, and water retention. She had to take three doses of this every day for a month. The effect of vincristine has been described as something like having a bomb go off inside your body. Its side effects include severe muscle and bone pain, foot drop, constipation and hair loss. She got an injection of this once a week for a month.
Three days after she was admitted, she had an operation to insert a catheter into an artery just above her heart (called a port-a-cath). The catheter has a little valve in it just under the skin, which allows easy access by a needle. Once the port-a-cath is inserted, most of the drugs were administered by inserting a needle into the valve and injecting the drugs this way. Because the catheter is tapping a major artery, the drugs are distributed throughout the body much more quickly than otherwise.
(The surgery was postponed twice due to lack of OR space. Not a big deal, except that she was not allowed to eat for 8 hours prior to the surgery. Which kept getting bumped by a day - while she is taking huge doses of steroids which make her ravenously hungry. She ate like two meals in three days waiting for that damned surgery.)
She was also subjected to daily blood draws - usually from her arm - which she *hated* more than anything else. She had several blood and platelet transfusions, one of which caused a severe allergic reaction that very nearly killed her. She also got a line infection (in her newly implanted catheter) and had a 2 week dose of nasty antibiotics.
At this point, I should explain that throughout treatment, Katie was required to have weekly blood tests. The chemo drugs do not differentiate between 'good' cells and bad 'cells' - they simply kill off anything that reproduces quickly. This includes hair follicle cells (which is why hair loss is a common side effect of chemo), and also fast reproducing cells like white blood cells, platelets and red blood cells.
The weekly blood tests were required to keep an eye on her hemoglobin levels (i.e. red blood cells), platelets, white cells, and particularly, something called neutrophils. Neutrophils are a kind of white blood cell whose function is to fight infection. If the level of neutrophils in the blood (called the absolute neutrophil count, or ANC) gets below a certain level, the body can no longer fight infection.
Anyhow, after the induction phase was over, the oncology team kept an eye on these levels, in particular the ANC, in order to tweak the dosages of the chemo drugs Katie was taking. The idea is to keep the ANC levels in a certain range - not too low, not too high. If the level gets too low, she was considered 'neutropenic' - unable to fight off infection - and most chemo would be suspended until the levels are high enough. Similarly with her platelet count - if it got too low, chemo would be suspended.
During induction, however, they just blast away, keep the patient in isolation, and give blood transfusions when necessary.
Almost everyone becomes neutropenic during the induction phase of treatment.
However, an ANC count in the acceptable range for a patient on chemotherapy is much lower than for a healthy person, and so anyone on chemotherapy has a suppressed immune system, with all the risks that implies.
By the end of the month, our happy little girl was gone. She could not walk, she wouldn't smile, she barely talked, except when she was screaming. She did nothing but eat. She ate a dozen boiled eggs *in one day*. She puffed up like a balloon, and her hair fell out in clumps.
It was unbearably terrifying to watch, and we really didn't know if we were ever going to get her back.
At the end of the one month induction phase, she had another BMA and LP. The BMA came back with less than 1% blasts. The LP came back clear. Katie was declared to be 'in remission'.
In addition to all this, she had other tests and procedures as well. She had an extensive neuropsych exam to benchmark her brain's development, and an MRI.
Eventually, she was able to walk again, and regained much of her former spark.
Once the induction phase was over (and the line infection had been treated), the second phase of treatment began. The second phase involved daily doses of a drug called mercatopurine (or 6mp), plus a one week "pulse" of dex between two injections of vincristine once every 6-8 weeks (these were called 'steroid weeks', they were greatly hated and feared). The pills, the dex in particular, tastes terrible (like gasoline). She also had to take a special antibiotic three days a week to protect her from a particularly lethal pneumonia.
Thankfully, my exceedingly clever girl, with the help of my exceedingly brilliant and capable wife, managed to learn how to swallow pills whole, so we would get the pills from the pharmacy, chop them up and stuff them into gel caps for her to take.
Every three weeks Katie had a three day inpatient stay where she received a 24 hour IV infusion of methotrexate (methotrexate is another nasty drug - when the nurses would come in to start the drip, they wore rubber gloves, masks and gowns. The drug itself comes in a bright yellow bag with large black letters that spell 'BIOHAZARD'. If they spilled it, they make us leave the room while a cleaning crew came in. If all went well, and nothing spilled, they started pushing into Katie's veins.). The methotrexate caused Katie's hands and feet to become bright red, as if they were severely sunburned. The skin would start to peel off. The stuff literally burned her extremeties from the inside.
In addition to all that, she had regular (every 8-10 weeks, I think) LPs, in which this same drug (methotrexate) would be inserted directly into her spinal column.
The consolidation phase lasted for 6 months. She had a second neuropsych exam to track her brain's development and the effects of 6 months of chemo. Thankfully, the tests showed no significant developmental problems.
After consolidation, there were no more planned inpatient visits. Kate was hospitalized once for shingles, and once for pneumonia. The dex/vincristine pulses were spread out a bit more, as were the LPs. She started taking a pill form of methotrexate once a week. The pill form of the drug caused the same kind of burning as the IV form. The vincristine never failed to cause her hair to fall out, and the dex turned her into a raving, ravenous psychotic for about a week.
When she had her last dex/vincristine pulse in the fall, we celebrated.
As I describe all these side effects and procedures, it strikes me that it must sound as if we lived our lives in perpetual shell shock and misery, and really, we didn't. The pill taking became routine, the hospital visits became annoyances, and Katie, amazing little girl that she is, pretty much became used to the side effects of the medication. We gave her an antinausea drug pretty much every day to counteract the chemo, but she occasionally would still get sick, usually first thing in the morning. She hardly ever complained. On LP days she wasn't allowed to eat until after the procedure, which happened sometime between 10am and 1pm - meaning that she would go without food from about 6:30pm the night before, without complaint. After these LPs she would come home and go out and swing on the swing set in our back yard and tell her friends she'd just had a lumbar puncture - as if that were the most natural thing in the world.
Because the pills she took worked best on an empty stomach, she was not allowed any food after 6:30 at night. She only grumbled a bit about this if her brother was eating something and she couldn't.
We became constantly vigilant about infection. If Katie became neutropenic, we took her temperature nightly. We became obsessive about hand washing. Even when she went back to school, she missed large amounts of time either because her counts were low, or because there was some plague going through the school.
All this became 'normal' life for us.
For me, making all of this habit was a way of coping with the treatment without thinking too much about its implications. A relapse during treatment drastically decreases the chances of survival. Over the course of the past 2 years, we met and became friends with several families with children who relapsed - and some who died as a result. It is the fear that all parents live with - what if the cancer comes back? It's a possibility so terrifying that for me the best way to cope is to not think about it. I've likened getting through this treatment to walking on a rickety bridge above a endlessly deep chasm. You have to keep moving. You have to keep your eyes on the other side. If you look down, you'll become paralyzed by fear.
But the bridge could collapse at any moment.
The last month of Katie's treatment was nearly as difficult for her (and us) as the first. Because her ANC counts had been consistently high throughout much of her treatment, the doctors kept increasing the dosages of the medication she was taking. The higher methotrexate dose caused the skin on her feet and hands to crack and bleed. Her lips and mouth became blistered and bloody. Her throat became so sore (more blisters) she could no longer swallow pills. She needed two blood transfusions in three weeks. Eventually, her platelets dropped below acceptable levels and she was pulled off chemo for a week, which allowed her to regain some strength.
On February 28, Katie had her final LP and BMA. Both came back clean.
On March 6, she took her last pills. March 7 was the official end of her treatment. The scars on her hands are already mostly healed.
When this started, I couldn't imagine how we were going to get through 2 and a half years. I got through it by doing what children in general, and Katie in particular, do naturally - take one day at a time, and don't think about the future.
It is impossible to overstate how proud I am of my daughter. She handled a horrific ordeal with grace, dignity, and humor.
She still has her port-a-cath, so she has to go into the hospital monthly to have it flushed (to avoid infection). It'll be removed in about 6 months, sooner if my wife has her way (and I wouldn't bet against her). She still has to take a weekly antibiotic because of the increased risk of pneumonia. She'll have monthly blood draws instead of weekly.
If she is cancer free in two years, she'll be considered a long term survivor. If she's cancer free in 5, she'll be considered "cured" - at no more risk of cancer than the general population. For the time being, we're still walking that bridge, even if it's not so rickety anymore.
As for long term side effects - there are a lot of unknowns. She's at higher risk of osteoporosis, due to the effects of the chemo on her bones, but a lot of that bone mass can be regrown with the right diet. Leukemia patients have a higher risk of obesity, for some reason.
The longer term side effects not yet well understood, because it hasn't been until relatively recently (like the last 20 years) that children have survived leukemia long enough to even worry about side effects. Learning difficulties and emotional issues are a possibility. She'll be tracked for the rest of her life by the medical system to find out.
* * * *
Okay, this is Highlander again, with some closing comments.
First, this story is a tribute to more than just Katie's enormous heroism, and the amazing emotional valor of her parents... although, frankly, I am so utterly in awe of Scott and his wife's strength through this unbelievable ordeal that there are no words to adequately describe how much I admire them, or their child.
More than that, though, this story is a tribute to the Canadian single payer health care system.
Try to imagine going through everything Scott has so admirably detailed above -- while worrying about how you were going to pay for everything, and whether or not your insurance plan was going to cover everything your child needed.
Several prominent lefty blogs have started to agitate lately for the Democrats to seriously push for universal health care in 2006 and beyond. I agree with them -- but most of them are very careful to note that Canada and Britain are NOT good examples of a single payer health care system.
I look at a story like this, and I try to imagine going through all this with a toddler in our current nightmarish health care system here in America, and honestly, I don't know what these people are bitching about.
Congratulations to Scott, his wife, and Katie. And thanks for sharing the story. Nobody ever gets enough good news like this.
and the feeling
that it's all a lot of oysters
and no pearls."
Katie was diagnosed August 26, 2003. She was nearly 3 and a half years old. She'll turn 6 on April 22nd.
She was sent to the hospital for blood tests on the advice of our family doctor, as a result of some odd bruising that had appeared on her back and torso.
The blood tests showed high white blood cell counts and led to further tests. An x-ray showed that Katie's liver and spleen were enlarged. Both of these are classic symptoms of leukemia.
Leukemia means, literally, "white blood". There are three types of blood cells that all people have - red blood cells that carry oxygen to the body, platelets which help with blood clotting, and white blood cells, which defend the body from infection and disease. All these cells are grown in the bone marrow, and are pushed into the blood stream as necessary. What happens with leukemia is that a white blood cell (called a lymphoblast,or blast, for short), instead of developing into a useful disease or bacteria fighting cell, mutates. This cancer cell does nothing useful; it simply multiplies, and multiplies... and multiplies. These blasts fill up the bone marrow, so that the marrow can no longer produce red blood cells, or platelets, or even useful white blood cells. The immune system becomes suppressed, and the body becomes more susceptible to infection, and with lowered platelet counts, bruising and internal bleeding become risks as well (those weird bruises, called patichia).
Eventually, they leak out into the blood stream and multiply again, hence -"white blood".
The liver and spleen become enlarged trying to cope with these mutant cells. Elevated amounts of white blood cells show up in a blood test.
Of course, a virus will also cause elevated white cell counts, and some viruses even eat platelets. An enlarged liver and spleen can be caused by mono. The only conclusive test for leukemia is a bone marrow aspiration (BMA), in which a needle is inserted into a marrow rich bone (usually the hip bone), and some marrow withdrawn.
Katie was admitted to the hospital that night. The mono test came back negative, so she was scheduled for a BMA the next day.
The BMA showed a marrow that was 99% white blood cells - a confirmation that the cause was leukemia.
They also performed a lumbar puncture (LP) - basically a spinal tap - in which they insert a needle into the base of Katie's spine and draw out some spinal fluid, to check for the presence of blasts in the CNS. Thankfully, this test came back clear, which meant no radiation therapy.
The official diagnosis was Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia, or ALL Leukemia is the most common type of childhood cancer, with around 4000 children diagnosed in the U.S every year. Ironically, because it is so common, it is also the cancer with the highest long term survival rates - around 80% overall, and more than 90% for some types.
The specific type of ALL depends on the kind of white cell that was mutated. There are leukemic cell lines - B and T. The treatment regime, or protocol is determined by the type of cell, along with other factors present at diagnosis. The three types of ALL are precursor B (pre-B), B, and T. Pre-B has the highest survival rate, T the lowest. Other risk (risk meaning risk of relapse) factors include age (infants have a very poor prognosis, as do children older than about 8 or 9), gender (girls have overall better survival rates than boys), the number of white blood cells present at diagnosis, and the specific genetic properties of the cancer cell in question. The technical diagnosis was pre-B ALL.
Katie's age, gender, and the genetic makeup of the cancer cells put her in what was considered the "low risk" category.
So basically, if she had to get cancer, she got the best kind.
At the time of Katie's diagnosis, there were at least two different organizations that had documented treatment protocols for leukemia - POG (Pediatric Oncology Group) and CCG (Children's Cancer Group). Whether you got a POG protocol or a CCG protocol depended in large part on where you lived and who your Oncologist was. Both types of protocols use the same drugs, for the most part, just in different combinations and at different times. However, the CCG protocols do not have a "low risk" category - a child is either "standard risk" or "high risk".
CHEO uses the POG protocols (or rather *used* the POG protocols - the two organizations have since merged their protocols into one agreed upon set), so Katie was put on a low risk protocol.
The low risk protocol is divided into three stages - induction, consolidation, and maintenance. Treatment starts immediately upon being diagnosed.
The induction phase is the most intensive of the three stages. The goal of induction is to wipe out as much of the cancer as possible, and so Katie was bombarded with at least 5 different drugs. The treatment started immediately. The drugs she got during this first phase included a ridiculously high dose of a steroid called dexamethasone, vincristine, L-asparaginase, cytarabine, methotrexate and daunorubicin. Most of these were were either injected via needle or put in through an IV.
Most chemotherapy drugs work by either killing off fast-reproducing cells, or disrupting their ability to reproduce. A side effect of virtually all of them is nausea and vomiting. Unfortunately, that is not the only side effect.
For Katie, the worst drugs in terms of side effects were the dex and the vincristine. These, she had regularly. The other drugs, with the exception of the methotrexate, were one-time doses during the first month.
The steroid caused extreme emotional volatility ('roid rage...in a three year old), fatigue, hugely increased appetite, muscle soreness, and water retention. She had to take three doses of this every day for a month. The effect of vincristine has been described as something like having a bomb go off inside your body. Its side effects include severe muscle and bone pain, foot drop, constipation and hair loss. She got an injection of this once a week for a month.
Three days after she was admitted, she had an operation to insert a catheter into an artery just above her heart (called a port-a-cath). The catheter has a little valve in it just under the skin, which allows easy access by a needle. Once the port-a-cath is inserted, most of the drugs were administered by inserting a needle into the valve and injecting the drugs this way. Because the catheter is tapping a major artery, the drugs are distributed throughout the body much more quickly than otherwise.
(The surgery was postponed twice due to lack of OR space. Not a big deal, except that she was not allowed to eat for 8 hours prior to the surgery. Which kept getting bumped by a day - while she is taking huge doses of steroids which make her ravenously hungry. She ate like two meals in three days waiting for that damned surgery.)
She was also subjected to daily blood draws - usually from her arm - which she *hated* more than anything else. She had several blood and platelet transfusions, one of which caused a severe allergic reaction that very nearly killed her. She also got a line infection (in her newly implanted catheter) and had a 2 week dose of nasty antibiotics.
At this point, I should explain that throughout treatment, Katie was required to have weekly blood tests. The chemo drugs do not differentiate between 'good' cells and bad 'cells' - they simply kill off anything that reproduces quickly. This includes hair follicle cells (which is why hair loss is a common side effect of chemo), and also fast reproducing cells like white blood cells, platelets and red blood cells.
The weekly blood tests were required to keep an eye on her hemoglobin levels (i.e. red blood cells), platelets, white cells, and particularly, something called neutrophils. Neutrophils are a kind of white blood cell whose function is to fight infection. If the level of neutrophils in the blood (called the absolute neutrophil count, or ANC) gets below a certain level, the body can no longer fight infection.
Anyhow, after the induction phase was over, the oncology team kept an eye on these levels, in particular the ANC, in order to tweak the dosages of the chemo drugs Katie was taking. The idea is to keep the ANC levels in a certain range - not too low, not too high. If the level gets too low, she was considered 'neutropenic' - unable to fight off infection - and most chemo would be suspended until the levels are high enough. Similarly with her platelet count - if it got too low, chemo would be suspended.
During induction, however, they just blast away, keep the patient in isolation, and give blood transfusions when necessary.
Almost everyone becomes neutropenic during the induction phase of treatment.
However, an ANC count in the acceptable range for a patient on chemotherapy is much lower than for a healthy person, and so anyone on chemotherapy has a suppressed immune system, with all the risks that implies.
By the end of the month, our happy little girl was gone. She could not walk, she wouldn't smile, she barely talked, except when she was screaming. She did nothing but eat. She ate a dozen boiled eggs *in one day*. She puffed up like a balloon, and her hair fell out in clumps.
It was unbearably terrifying to watch, and we really didn't know if we were ever going to get her back.
At the end of the one month induction phase, she had another BMA and LP. The BMA came back with less than 1% blasts. The LP came back clear. Katie was declared to be 'in remission'.
In addition to all this, she had other tests and procedures as well. She had an extensive neuropsych exam to benchmark her brain's development, and an MRI.
Eventually, she was able to walk again, and regained much of her former spark.
Once the induction phase was over (and the line infection had been treated), the second phase of treatment began. The second phase involved daily doses of a drug called mercatopurine (or 6mp), plus a one week "pulse" of dex between two injections of vincristine once every 6-8 weeks (these were called 'steroid weeks', they were greatly hated and feared). The pills, the dex in particular, tastes terrible (like gasoline). She also had to take a special antibiotic three days a week to protect her from a particularly lethal pneumonia.
Thankfully, my exceedingly clever girl, with the help of my exceedingly brilliant and capable wife, managed to learn how to swallow pills whole, so we would get the pills from the pharmacy, chop them up and stuff them into gel caps for her to take.
Every three weeks Katie had a three day inpatient stay where she received a 24 hour IV infusion of methotrexate (methotrexate is another nasty drug - when the nurses would come in to start the drip, they wore rubber gloves, masks and gowns. The drug itself comes in a bright yellow bag with large black letters that spell 'BIOHAZARD'. If they spilled it, they make us leave the room while a cleaning crew came in. If all went well, and nothing spilled, they started pushing into Katie's veins.). The methotrexate caused Katie's hands and feet to become bright red, as if they were severely sunburned. The skin would start to peel off. The stuff literally burned her extremeties from the inside.
In addition to all that, she had regular (every 8-10 weeks, I think) LPs, in which this same drug (methotrexate) would be inserted directly into her spinal column.
The consolidation phase lasted for 6 months. She had a second neuropsych exam to track her brain's development and the effects of 6 months of chemo. Thankfully, the tests showed no significant developmental problems.
After consolidation, there were no more planned inpatient visits. Kate was hospitalized once for shingles, and once for pneumonia. The dex/vincristine pulses were spread out a bit more, as were the LPs. She started taking a pill form of methotrexate once a week. The pill form of the drug caused the same kind of burning as the IV form. The vincristine never failed to cause her hair to fall out, and the dex turned her into a raving, ravenous psychotic for about a week.
When she had her last dex/vincristine pulse in the fall, we celebrated.
As I describe all these side effects and procedures, it strikes me that it must sound as if we lived our lives in perpetual shell shock and misery, and really, we didn't. The pill taking became routine, the hospital visits became annoyances, and Katie, amazing little girl that she is, pretty much became used to the side effects of the medication. We gave her an antinausea drug pretty much every day to counteract the chemo, but she occasionally would still get sick, usually first thing in the morning. She hardly ever complained. On LP days she wasn't allowed to eat until after the procedure, which happened sometime between 10am and 1pm - meaning that she would go without food from about 6:30pm the night before, without complaint. After these LPs she would come home and go out and swing on the swing set in our back yard and tell her friends she'd just had a lumbar puncture - as if that were the most natural thing in the world.
Because the pills she took worked best on an empty stomach, she was not allowed any food after 6:30 at night. She only grumbled a bit about this if her brother was eating something and she couldn't.
We became constantly vigilant about infection. If Katie became neutropenic, we took her temperature nightly. We became obsessive about hand washing. Even when she went back to school, she missed large amounts of time either because her counts were low, or because there was some plague going through the school.
All this became 'normal' life for us.
For me, making all of this habit was a way of coping with the treatment without thinking too much about its implications. A relapse during treatment drastically decreases the chances of survival. Over the course of the past 2 years, we met and became friends with several families with children who relapsed - and some who died as a result. It is the fear that all parents live with - what if the cancer comes back? It's a possibility so terrifying that for me the best way to cope is to not think about it. I've likened getting through this treatment to walking on a rickety bridge above a endlessly deep chasm. You have to keep moving. You have to keep your eyes on the other side. If you look down, you'll become paralyzed by fear.
But the bridge could collapse at any moment.
The last month of Katie's treatment was nearly as difficult for her (and us) as the first. Because her ANC counts had been consistently high throughout much of her treatment, the doctors kept increasing the dosages of the medication she was taking. The higher methotrexate dose caused the skin on her feet and hands to crack and bleed. Her lips and mouth became blistered and bloody. Her throat became so sore (more blisters) she could no longer swallow pills. She needed two blood transfusions in three weeks. Eventually, her platelets dropped below acceptable levels and she was pulled off chemo for a week, which allowed her to regain some strength.
On February 28, Katie had her final LP and BMA. Both came back clean.
On March 6, she took her last pills. March 7 was the official end of her treatment. The scars on her hands are already mostly healed.
When this started, I couldn't imagine how we were going to get through 2 and a half years. I got through it by doing what children in general, and Katie in particular, do naturally - take one day at a time, and don't think about the future.
It is impossible to overstate how proud I am of my daughter. She handled a horrific ordeal with grace, dignity, and humor.
She still has her port-a-cath, so she has to go into the hospital monthly to have it flushed (to avoid infection). It'll be removed in about 6 months, sooner if my wife has her way (and I wouldn't bet against her). She still has to take a weekly antibiotic because of the increased risk of pneumonia. She'll have monthly blood draws instead of weekly.
If she is cancer free in two years, she'll be considered a long term survivor. If she's cancer free in 5, she'll be considered "cured" - at no more risk of cancer than the general population. For the time being, we're still walking that bridge, even if it's not so rickety anymore.
As for long term side effects - there are a lot of unknowns. She's at higher risk of osteoporosis, due to the effects of the chemo on her bones, but a lot of that bone mass can be regrown with the right diet. Leukemia patients have a higher risk of obesity, for some reason.
The longer term side effects not yet well understood, because it hasn't been until relatively recently (like the last 20 years) that children have survived leukemia long enough to even worry about side effects. Learning difficulties and emotional issues are a possibility. She'll be tracked for the rest of her life by the medical system to find out.
* * * *
Okay, this is Highlander again, with some closing comments.
First, this story is a tribute to more than just Katie's enormous heroism, and the amazing emotional valor of her parents... although, frankly, I am so utterly in awe of Scott and his wife's strength through this unbelievable ordeal that there are no words to adequately describe how much I admire them, or their child.
More than that, though, this story is a tribute to the Canadian single payer health care system.
Try to imagine going through everything Scott has so admirably detailed above -- while worrying about how you were going to pay for everything, and whether or not your insurance plan was going to cover everything your child needed.
Several prominent lefty blogs have started to agitate lately for the Democrats to seriously push for universal health care in 2006 and beyond. I agree with them -- but most of them are very careful to note that Canada and Britain are NOT good examples of a single payer health care system.
I look at a story like this, and I try to imagine going through all this with a toddler in our current nightmarish health care system here in America, and honestly, I don't know what these people are bitching about.
Congratulations to Scott, his wife, and Katie. And thanks for sharing the story. Nobody ever gets enough good news like this.
Octavia E. Butler, R.I.P.
This one apparently got by our local deathmeister, Mark Gibson -- I didn't find out about it until I was scanning some one else's blog entirely, but apparently, Octavia E. Butler died recently.
Butler wrote a helluva lot of very intelligent SF over the course of her life. My favorite book by her remains one of my favorite books of all time, MIND OF MY MIND; it's a nearly indescribable story of a race of modern telepaths and in it, Butler introduces one of the most effectively chilling villains of all time and space, a guy named Doro. If you've read the book, you know what I'm talking about; if you haven't, well, you should.
Butler's other work is also worth taking a look at. MIND OF MY MIND is the only one I own a copy of, but I think I've read all her other stuff, and even when I didn't find it particularly enjoyable, she was always a thought provoking read.
I'm sorry she's gone.
Butler wrote a helluva lot of very intelligent SF over the course of her life. My favorite book by her remains one of my favorite books of all time, MIND OF MY MIND; it's a nearly indescribable story of a race of modern telepaths and in it, Butler introduces one of the most effectively chilling villains of all time and space, a guy named Doro. If you've read the book, you know what I'm talking about; if you haven't, well, you should.
Butler's other work is also worth taking a look at. MIND OF MY MIND is the only one I own a copy of, but I think I've read all her other stuff, and even when I didn't find it particularly enjoyable, she was always a thought provoking read.
I'm sorry she's gone.
Word!
I know, nobody says 'word!' any more, but what the hell, I'm old.
Here's something I found at one of my many email accounts this morning:
Mr. Madigan,
We're publishing a book on the best (unique) HeroClix website on the Internet. I'd like to print your adapted rules in the front. Our in-house team play-tested the adaptations and gave them "five out of five" stars. We will credit you for your work, of course, and provide a link or links to whichever part of your website you'd prefer. If you provide us with a mailing address, we can also send you a copy of the published book.
Please let me know if this is acceptable to you. If you aren't comfortable
with it, I completely understand.
You can find a complete line of our pop culture books (published through our Lightning Rod division) at www.windstormcreative.com/lightning/index.htm.
Thank you for your time.
Jennifer DiMarco
Chief Executive Officer
Windstorm Creative
I checked out the link (you need to put a 'http://' in front of it to get there) and it seems on the up and up.
No money, naturally, but I suppose a little more attention can't be a bad thing.
Here's something I found at one of my many email accounts this morning:
We're publishing a book on the best (unique) HeroClix website on the Internet. I'd like to print your adapted rules in the front. Our in-house team play-tested the adaptations and gave them "five out of five" stars. We will credit you for your work, of course, and provide a link or links to whichever part of your website you'd prefer. If you provide us with a mailing address, we can also send you a copy of the published book.
Please let me know if this is acceptable to you. If you aren't comfortable
with it, I completely understand.
You can find a complete line of our pop culture books (published through our Lightning Rod division) at www.windstormcreative.com/lightning/index.htm.
Thank you for your time.
Jennifer DiMarco
Chief Executive Officer
Windstorm Creative
I checked out the link (you need to put a 'http://' in front of it to get there) and it seems on the up and up.
No money, naturally, but I suppose a little more attention can't be a bad thing.
Thursday, March 09, 2006
Idle hands
I want to blog about something, really have nothing in mind, but, still, here I go:
It's my day off from work. The SuperKids are at school, SuperGirlfriend is out single handedly keeping her appallingly badly managed company afloat, and I'm here, type-type-typing away. SG will probably be home for lunch in an hour or so, which will be nice for a while until she has to head back to the grind. Until then, what's up?
Well, it's a dismal looking day outside -- grey and gloomy and drizzly. The temps are up in the low 60s, which would be lovely with a little sun, but in a way, I'm happy to have it look so rotten, as it keeps me from being tempted to go outside in it. Any excuse to stay home on my day off and do indoor stuff involving computers, books, and my X-box is a good excuse, I think.
Let's see. Last weekend we were bored so we took the kids over to a few local, very upscale malls and wandered around a little. One of them had a game shop where I bought a couple of boosters of COLLATERAL DAMAGE. I sat on a bench while SuperGirlfriend and the SuperKids were over checking out Pottery Barn for Kids and opened the first one. There was a tell tale blue clix holder in it, meaning a Unique, so I got all excited, but then it turned out to be the newest version of Eclipso, a character I really can't stand. I've already gotten one, which I traded to Super Dependable Teen after discovering I couldn't give her away on the WK Forum Trading Board without tying a pork chop around her neck. So I shrugged and figured what the hell and now she's on display in my Mystics group. I don't like her and am unlikely to ever play her, but nobody is going to trade me a Kingdom Come Green Lantern for her either, so there she is.
One is supposed to get one Unique per 3 random boosters these days, so I figured I had no chance of pulling one in the second booster. I was pleasantly surprised, then, to open it and see another blue clix case. Still, I cautioned myself against too much joy, figuring it was most likely just another piece I already had and didn't like much, like Jonah Hex or the Crimson Avenger. I pulled it out, peered at it closely through its enveloping plastic, and...
Sonofabitch! ORION!!!
So now I have both New Gods put out in this set, Orion and Kalibak, and I'm pretty happy about that.
We also took a bunch of old DVDs and CDs over to Great Escape and sold them, and I used the money to buy a couple of figs, including an Owlman.
Then, a day or so ago, SuperGirlfriend presented me with a box from Mike Norton. Apparently, she'd bought one of the figs from his recent auctions as a gift for me. I opened it up, and there it was: Adam Strange. Yay! I love SuperGirlfriend. She spoils me rotten, for no good reason at all.
At this point,all I really want further as far as COLLATERAL DAMAGE Uniques go is Dr. Psycho (I'd love to play a Society Board of Directors team, and with Dr. Psycho, I'd have all five members in clix form). There are still several Vets I'd like to get -- Mary Marvel, Manhunter, Monsier Mallah & the Brain, Kyle Rayner, Clayface, Fire, Ice, Red Tornado... enough to make me wistfully think about buying another brick of CD, this one probably from an online shop.
Fortunately, SINISTER isn't coming out until 'summer', so I don't need to worry about sinking money into that for a while. And I can buy a brick at online prices when it does come out, since I have no desire to own the Mail Order Exclusive Venom that I'll need the brick and mortar store coupon to order.
Still haven't sent my House of M Spider-Man off to be replaced as yet. I should do that. I should do it today, since it's my day off. ::sigh::
Well, maybe a little later.
It's my day off from work. The SuperKids are at school, SuperGirlfriend is out single handedly keeping her appallingly badly managed company afloat, and I'm here, type-type-typing away. SG will probably be home for lunch in an hour or so, which will be nice for a while until she has to head back to the grind. Until then, what's up?
Well, it's a dismal looking day outside -- grey and gloomy and drizzly. The temps are up in the low 60s, which would be lovely with a little sun, but in a way, I'm happy to have it look so rotten, as it keeps me from being tempted to go outside in it. Any excuse to stay home on my day off and do indoor stuff involving computers, books, and my X-box is a good excuse, I think.
Let's see. Last weekend we were bored so we took the kids over to a few local, very upscale malls and wandered around a little. One of them had a game shop where I bought a couple of boosters of COLLATERAL DAMAGE. I sat on a bench while SuperGirlfriend and the SuperKids were over checking out Pottery Barn for Kids and opened the first one. There was a tell tale blue clix holder in it, meaning a Unique, so I got all excited, but then it turned out to be the newest version of Eclipso, a character I really can't stand. I've already gotten one, which I traded to Super Dependable Teen after discovering I couldn't give her away on the WK Forum Trading Board without tying a pork chop around her neck. So I shrugged and figured what the hell and now she's on display in my Mystics group. I don't like her and am unlikely to ever play her, but nobody is going to trade me a Kingdom Come Green Lantern for her either, so there she is.
One is supposed to get one Unique per 3 random boosters these days, so I figured I had no chance of pulling one in the second booster. I was pleasantly surprised, then, to open it and see another blue clix case. Still, I cautioned myself against too much joy, figuring it was most likely just another piece I already had and didn't like much, like Jonah Hex or the Crimson Avenger. I pulled it out, peered at it closely through its enveloping plastic, and...
Sonofabitch! ORION!!!
So now I have both New Gods put out in this set, Orion and Kalibak, and I'm pretty happy about that.
We also took a bunch of old DVDs and CDs over to Great Escape and sold them, and I used the money to buy a couple of figs, including an Owlman.
Then, a day or so ago, SuperGirlfriend presented me with a box from Mike Norton. Apparently, she'd bought one of the figs from his recent auctions as a gift for me. I opened it up, and there it was: Adam Strange. Yay! I love SuperGirlfriend. She spoils me rotten, for no good reason at all.
At this point,all I really want further as far as COLLATERAL DAMAGE Uniques go is Dr. Psycho (I'd love to play a Society Board of Directors team, and with Dr. Psycho, I'd have all five members in clix form). There are still several Vets I'd like to get -- Mary Marvel, Manhunter, Monsier Mallah & the Brain, Kyle Rayner, Clayface, Fire, Ice, Red Tornado... enough to make me wistfully think about buying another brick of CD, this one probably from an online shop.
Fortunately, SINISTER isn't coming out until 'summer', so I don't need to worry about sinking money into that for a while. And I can buy a brick at online prices when it does come out, since I have no desire to own the Mail Order Exclusive Venom that I'll need the brick and mortar store coupon to order.
Still haven't sent my House of M Spider-Man off to be replaced as yet. I should do that. I should do it today, since it's my day off. ::sigh::
Well, maybe a little later.
Sunday, March 05, 2006
Infinite Mortality
Here's some thoughts on INFINITE CRISIS #5. If you haven't read it yet, and don't like spoilers, don't hit that expansion link:
Lois Lane is dead.
To the vast majority of DC's current audience, this won't mean much -- the Lois Lane who dies in INFINITE CRISIS #5 is, after all, not the 'real' Lois Lane to them; she's some wrinkled old crone with white-streaked blue hair wearing a gramma dress. It will never occur to most of these readers that, in point of fact, the current, Modern Day Lois Lane, who is young and hip and happening, whose dark hair is brown, not black, because John Byrne got tired of 'blue hair' jokes, and who bears more than a passing resemblance to a Terri Hatcher somewhat younger than the one who is currently appearing in DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES, is, in fact, little more than a pallid, modern day reincarnation of the true Lois Lane.
The true Lois Lane -- this is the Lois Lane that has become part of our modern day mythology, the Lois Lane mentioned in countless passing pop culture references, the Lois Lane who starred in her own series of often absurdly idiotic but always endearingly goofy comic book adventures from 1957 through the end of the Silver Age in 1985, the Lois who competed constantly with Lana Lang for Superman's affections, who launched countless hairbrained schemes intended to trick Superman into marrying her, or confirming her suspicions that he was really Clark Kent, who gained various different superhuman powers dozens if not hundreds of times and who underwent dozens if not hundreds of bizarre transformations due to magic, alien science, futuristic technology, or some even more indescribable plot device.
The true Lois Lane -- to call her a seminal character is so profound an understatement as to border on irony. A character which has spawned over a dozen different incarnations in every entertainment media, from radio to TV to Broadway to theatrical film releases, and who has even spawned a version of herself who is an evil otherdimensional Superwoman (see the Modern Age Crime Syndicate of Amerika), Lois Lane is the icon of and the template for virtually every female romantic interest, intrepid girl reporter, and damsel in distress in modern heroic fiction.
Pick up any of literally thousands of National/DC comics published between 1938 and 1985 that have a character named Lois Lane appearing in them somewhere; this is the character I'm talking about. Listen to Charlie Sexton list a cavalcade of iconic romantic couples in his 80s power ballad I Am Not Impressed, his list ends with "Superman and Lois Lane". Lois Lane is who the viewpoint character is singing to in the Spin Doctors' Pocketful of Kryptonite. Lois Lane is who Superman was inevitably destined to marry and have children with, according to countless Silver Age Imaginary Stories.
Superman's Girlfriend, Lois Lane.
R.I.P.
Oddly enough, the death of this fundamental superheroic mythology icon doesn't reverberate anywhere near as much as it should in IC #5. It's probably impossible for this epoch-ending event to actually be depicted with the level of intensity and significance it actually has for superhero comics, since, as I've already noted, to the vast majority of contemporary readers, the character who dies in this story will not be anyone they have much emotional interest in. Even to me, this wrinkled old lady does not seem like the 'real' Lois Lane, any more than the original Superman, the Superman from the Golden Age, seems like the 'real' Superman. To me, the best I can do emotionally is to think of him and his Lois as being real alternate versions of the characters; to my mind, the real Lois, and the real Superman, are the Silver Age characters I grew up with, who seem to have mysteriously and without any explanation whatsoever simply vanished, victims of the weird temporal transformations wrought in the first CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS. The original Golden Age Superman and Lois were saved out, and new Modern Age versions of Superman and Lois were created; somehow along the way, the Silver Age versions who were my childhood companions have just evaporated.
And if even I have trouble regarding this deceased old woman as the 'real' Lois Lane, it must be impossible for Modern Age readers to have any real understanding of what an essential, fundamental character comics has just lost. Given all of that, it's probably not likely that anyone could have written the sequence any better than Geoff Johns did... and yet, still... the death of the original Romantic Interest comes off kind of flat... something that probably isn't helped any by Johns tossing in yet another pointless but seemingly obligatory fight scene right after, as the Earth-2 Superman flies into a primal rage and takes out his grief, briefly, on the Modern Age Superman, who shows up originally to console him, and sticks around to punch his aging lights out.
IC #5 is the first issue of the series I've felt even vaguely disappointed in, and I cannot, as yet, narrow down specifically why. It may be simply that the previous 4 installments all ended on cliffhangers so well crafted as to leave me achingly anxious for the next chapter, while the ending to this issue, while certainly a cliffhanger, seems forced and arbitrary to me. Or it may be that in previous episodes it has seemed as if a great many things happened in each, with various bits of breathtaking brilliance studded like gems throughout a densely event-packed narrative, and in this one, virtually nothing happens at all, and the brilliant stuff boils down to little more than a half a dozen bits of good dialogue.
With ONE YEAR LATER issues already available for a few titles at comics shops now, and two more issues of INFINITY CRISIS still unpublished, it could also be that this series is already feeling drawn out and old hat. With various new, much anticipated series like SECRET SIX, SHADOWPACT, CHECKMATE, a new BLUE BEETLE, and a new SPECTRE due out in May, one even has to wonder if IC's final issue will have appeared by then.
Lastly, it could just be that the spectacularly annoying placement of ads in this issue has directly contributed to just how little an emotional impact it seems to have had on me. We get four pages of story and then a full page facing ad; on the other side of that ad is another page of story, followed by another full page ad. Then we get three more pages of story and another full page ad. Then we get a big 8 uninterrupted pages; just enough to let us think maybe we can finally settle into the narrative flow without rude interruptions, but then -- oh no! DC has to kick us in the nuts their damned selves by interrupting the story yet AGAIN for a goddam house ad for a frickin' goddam Batman and Robin All Star Ceramic Statue, for Christ's sake. Then seven more pages of story, turn the page, and -- AUGH! it's another house ad, this time for a new Red Sonja and Claw the Conqueror comic debuting in March; the last thing on God's Earth anyone reading INFINITE CRISIS cares about. Then we get one page of a great many Earths apparently appearing out of the very empty ether, followed by another house ad, this one featuring an appallingly rendered Batman and Joker visual by Sam Kieth, who should still be serving time for the horrors he inflicted on SANDMAN back in the 80s, but who has apparently been paroled.
Then we get another seven pages of story, again, just enough to let us start to relax once more -- and then, we turn a page and get smacked with yet another house ad, this one for more merchanise; goddam action figures based on some out of continuity Alex Ross mini-series. Then we get the last page of the issue's story -- followed by NINE MORE PAGES OF HOUSE ADS and self promotion, enough to make nearly any reader wonder "gee, for the $4 per issue I'm paying for this thing, couldn't they have maybe given me a couple more pages of story instead of all these fucking commercials?"
Out of 48 pages between the actual covers, 16 pages are ads. Counting the covers themselves, 19 pages out of 52 are ads. This may not seem like such a high ratio, but to those of us who grew up with Silver Age DC comics, when the ads were thoughtfully spaced in such a way that they were printed back to back, and could be torn out of the comics without in any way harming the story, this is just aggravating -- and given that the ad placement seems to be calculated to interrupt the story at points of maximum attention, it also seems to be almost cruelly counterproductive in terms of the actual storytelling artform.
I generally don't bother to buy the inevitable trade paperback collections of series I've bought in the original issues, but when INFINITE CRISIS comes out as such, I may make an exception, simply because the narrative flow of the story has been so badly damaged by the ubiquitous ad placement in it.
I'm not at all sure whether I'll be sticking around for many, or any, DC comics after INFINITE CRISIS is over. With Geoff Johns apparently teaming up with Kurt Busiek on SUPERMAN, a character I've had no interest in whatsoever since the first CRISIS, well, DC's biggest continuing drawing point for me may not be retaining my interest much longer. And I'm already seeing signs that Johns' work is starting to slip somewhat in quality. And while it's good to see DC striving to expand their target demographic with new, minority versions of their older characters, well, clearly I'm not part of that new target demographic, and blatant tokenism has never really appealed to me much, anyway.
Still, I've come this far with the series, I guess I'll stick around for the finish. I just hope this issue is a momentary downturn in quality, and the next one picks things back up again. I'd hate to see a story as promising as this one is just fizzle out.
Lois Lane is dead.
To the vast majority of DC's current audience, this won't mean much -- the Lois Lane who dies in INFINITE CRISIS #5 is, after all, not the 'real' Lois Lane to them; she's some wrinkled old crone with white-streaked blue hair wearing a gramma dress. It will never occur to most of these readers that, in point of fact, the current, Modern Day Lois Lane, who is young and hip and happening, whose dark hair is brown, not black, because John Byrne got tired of 'blue hair' jokes, and who bears more than a passing resemblance to a Terri Hatcher somewhat younger than the one who is currently appearing in DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES, is, in fact, little more than a pallid, modern day reincarnation of the true Lois Lane.
The true Lois Lane -- this is the Lois Lane that has become part of our modern day mythology, the Lois Lane mentioned in countless passing pop culture references, the Lois Lane who starred in her own series of often absurdly idiotic but always endearingly goofy comic book adventures from 1957 through the end of the Silver Age in 1985, the Lois who competed constantly with Lana Lang for Superman's affections, who launched countless hairbrained schemes intended to trick Superman into marrying her, or confirming her suspicions that he was really Clark Kent, who gained various different superhuman powers dozens if not hundreds of times and who underwent dozens if not hundreds of bizarre transformations due to magic, alien science, futuristic technology, or some even more indescribable plot device.
The true Lois Lane -- to call her a seminal character is so profound an understatement as to border on irony. A character which has spawned over a dozen different incarnations in every entertainment media, from radio to TV to Broadway to theatrical film releases, and who has even spawned a version of herself who is an evil otherdimensional Superwoman (see the Modern Age Crime Syndicate of Amerika), Lois Lane is the icon of and the template for virtually every female romantic interest, intrepid girl reporter, and damsel in distress in modern heroic fiction.
Pick up any of literally thousands of National/DC comics published between 1938 and 1985 that have a character named Lois Lane appearing in them somewhere; this is the character I'm talking about. Listen to Charlie Sexton list a cavalcade of iconic romantic couples in his 80s power ballad I Am Not Impressed, his list ends with "Superman and Lois Lane". Lois Lane is who the viewpoint character is singing to in the Spin Doctors' Pocketful of Kryptonite. Lois Lane is who Superman was inevitably destined to marry and have children with, according to countless Silver Age Imaginary Stories.
Superman's Girlfriend, Lois Lane.
R.I.P.
Oddly enough, the death of this fundamental superheroic mythology icon doesn't reverberate anywhere near as much as it should in IC #5. It's probably impossible for this epoch-ending event to actually be depicted with the level of intensity and significance it actually has for superhero comics, since, as I've already noted, to the vast majority of contemporary readers, the character who dies in this story will not be anyone they have much emotional interest in. Even to me, this wrinkled old lady does not seem like the 'real' Lois Lane, any more than the original Superman, the Superman from the Golden Age, seems like the 'real' Superman. To me, the best I can do emotionally is to think of him and his Lois as being real alternate versions of the characters; to my mind, the real Lois, and the real Superman, are the Silver Age characters I grew up with, who seem to have mysteriously and without any explanation whatsoever simply vanished, victims of the weird temporal transformations wrought in the first CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS. The original Golden Age Superman and Lois were saved out, and new Modern Age versions of Superman and Lois were created; somehow along the way, the Silver Age versions who were my childhood companions have just evaporated.
And if even I have trouble regarding this deceased old woman as the 'real' Lois Lane, it must be impossible for Modern Age readers to have any real understanding of what an essential, fundamental character comics has just lost. Given all of that, it's probably not likely that anyone could have written the sequence any better than Geoff Johns did... and yet, still... the death of the original Romantic Interest comes off kind of flat... something that probably isn't helped any by Johns tossing in yet another pointless but seemingly obligatory fight scene right after, as the Earth-2 Superman flies into a primal rage and takes out his grief, briefly, on the Modern Age Superman, who shows up originally to console him, and sticks around to punch his aging lights out.
IC #5 is the first issue of the series I've felt even vaguely disappointed in, and I cannot, as yet, narrow down specifically why. It may be simply that the previous 4 installments all ended on cliffhangers so well crafted as to leave me achingly anxious for the next chapter, while the ending to this issue, while certainly a cliffhanger, seems forced and arbitrary to me. Or it may be that in previous episodes it has seemed as if a great many things happened in each, with various bits of breathtaking brilliance studded like gems throughout a densely event-packed narrative, and in this one, virtually nothing happens at all, and the brilliant stuff boils down to little more than a half a dozen bits of good dialogue.
With ONE YEAR LATER issues already available for a few titles at comics shops now, and two more issues of INFINITY CRISIS still unpublished, it could also be that this series is already feeling drawn out and old hat. With various new, much anticipated series like SECRET SIX, SHADOWPACT, CHECKMATE, a new BLUE BEETLE, and a new SPECTRE due out in May, one even has to wonder if IC's final issue will have appeared by then.
Lastly, it could just be that the spectacularly annoying placement of ads in this issue has directly contributed to just how little an emotional impact it seems to have had on me. We get four pages of story and then a full page facing ad; on the other side of that ad is another page of story, followed by another full page ad. Then we get three more pages of story and another full page ad. Then we get a big 8 uninterrupted pages; just enough to let us think maybe we can finally settle into the narrative flow without rude interruptions, but then -- oh no! DC has to kick us in the nuts their damned selves by interrupting the story yet AGAIN for a goddam house ad for a frickin' goddam Batman and Robin All Star Ceramic Statue, for Christ's sake. Then seven more pages of story, turn the page, and -- AUGH! it's another house ad, this time for a new Red Sonja and Claw the Conqueror comic debuting in March; the last thing on God's Earth anyone reading INFINITE CRISIS cares about. Then we get one page of a great many Earths apparently appearing out of the very empty ether, followed by another house ad, this one featuring an appallingly rendered Batman and Joker visual by Sam Kieth, who should still be serving time for the horrors he inflicted on SANDMAN back in the 80s, but who has apparently been paroled.
Then we get another seven pages of story, again, just enough to let us start to relax once more -- and then, we turn a page and get smacked with yet another house ad, this one for more merchanise; goddam action figures based on some out of continuity Alex Ross mini-series. Then we get the last page of the issue's story -- followed by NINE MORE PAGES OF HOUSE ADS and self promotion, enough to make nearly any reader wonder "gee, for the $4 per issue I'm paying for this thing, couldn't they have maybe given me a couple more pages of story instead of all these fucking commercials?"
Out of 48 pages between the actual covers, 16 pages are ads. Counting the covers themselves, 19 pages out of 52 are ads. This may not seem like such a high ratio, but to those of us who grew up with Silver Age DC comics, when the ads were thoughtfully spaced in such a way that they were printed back to back, and could be torn out of the comics without in any way harming the story, this is just aggravating -- and given that the ad placement seems to be calculated to interrupt the story at points of maximum attention, it also seems to be almost cruelly counterproductive in terms of the actual storytelling artform.
I generally don't bother to buy the inevitable trade paperback collections of series I've bought in the original issues, but when INFINITE CRISIS comes out as such, I may make an exception, simply because the narrative flow of the story has been so badly damaged by the ubiquitous ad placement in it.
I'm not at all sure whether I'll be sticking around for many, or any, DC comics after INFINITE CRISIS is over. With Geoff Johns apparently teaming up with Kurt Busiek on SUPERMAN, a character I've had no interest in whatsoever since the first CRISIS, well, DC's biggest continuing drawing point for me may not be retaining my interest much longer. And I'm already seeing signs that Johns' work is starting to slip somewhat in quality. And while it's good to see DC striving to expand their target demographic with new, minority versions of their older characters, well, clearly I'm not part of that new target demographic, and blatant tokenism has never really appealed to me much, anyway.
Still, I've come this far with the series, I guess I'll stick around for the finish. I just hope this issue is a momentary downturn in quality, and the next one picks things back up again. I'd hate to see a story as promising as this one is just fizzle out.
Thursday, March 02, 2006
Sick days, clix trades, and other nonsense
Since my last more or less personal update, it seems like a few things have happened. First, SuperAdorable Kid spiked a high fever Sunday night, so SuperGirlfriend took her to the doctor's on Monday. They prescribed some antibiotics and stated that SuperAdorable Kid wasn't to go back to school until she had been fever free for 24 hours... which, at that point, meant she wasn't going back to school on Tuesday.
SuperGirlfriend is one of maybe three competent people on staff at her job, and therefore does a great deal of the work in her extremely busy office, and she just couldn't take another day off so quickly after having taken some vacation time recently for Nate's visit. I, having just been hired on permanently at my job, suddenly had floating holidays I could use up, so I gave my boss puppy dog eyes and ended up staying home to take care of SuperAdorable Kid on Tuesday.
Now, I've been sick, on and off, myself for the past couple of months; I've had a nagging hacking cough that cycles up and down in frequency and phlegm content, but that I just haven't been able to fully get rid of. Add to that two museum visits in the last couple of weeks that have severely drained my physical energy reserves (staying on my feet for hours at a time, at my excessive weight, after six months of a desk job, was just exhausting) and, well, I wasn't fully charged, to say the least. And, well, I honestly had no idea just how arduous a day of taking care of an alternately hyperkinetic/miserably feverish 6 year old could be.
How SuperGirlfriend has managed this for 16 years I do not know... one day of it with SuperAdorable Kid wiped me out. I had thought I could not possibly respect and admire SuperGirlfriend any more than I already do; I had thought that upper limit had been long since reached... but it was not so. My God, childcare is brutal.
Anyway, between the emotional stress of SuperAdorable Kid being sick (which causes you to worry terribly, when you're the only caregiver, that you're going to do something stupid or wrong and break the baby and then life will really suck) and the sheer physical enervation that results from trying to keep an unusually rambunctious six year old quiet and under control when her fever isn't spiking and she wants to hang from the ceiling like a bat and fight ninjas, I was wiped out.
Which wouldn't have been all that bad -- a good night's rest would probably have fixed me up -- but then whatever it is that's causing my nagging cough decided to get all opportunistic on me. Suddenly I was feeling really punk, and despite being exhausted, I didn't sleep at all well Tuesday night, and dragged myself into work feeling (and probably looking) like death warmed over.
I got through that ten hour day -- somehow -- don't ask me how. I felt utterly wiped out for most of it, and was continually fighting the urge to just call SuperGirlfriend and have her come pick me up, but I was very aware that I probably hadn't made a great impression on my first week of permanent work taking a floating holiday so quickly, so I did my best to hang in there. And I managed it, but by the time I got out of there, I just felt horrible. Went straight home, slugged down some Nyquil, and tumbled into bed, exhausted...
...and didn't sleep much at all.
SuperGirlfriend had taken my temperature when I got home and discovered I had a 101 degree fever. That certainly contributed to keeping me awake, but mostly I just couldn't get my mind to shut down... I was worried about how I'd do at work the next day if I didn't sleep, and of course, that made it much harder for me to get to sleep... the vicious cycle that has plagued me all my life, and guaranteed that I am never well rested the day I go in for job interviews or important tests, if they are scheduled early in the morning.
Then I started having bad diarrhea last night, which continued until this morning, which also didn't help me get any sleep. So I called in sick today. I still haven't had much sleep, but I managed to catch a few hours in the late morning and early afternoon when the rest of the fam was out at school and work. Without the stress of having to go in to work tomorrow, I should sleep okay tonight... I hope! And I similarly hope that if I take it easy this weekend, I can shake most of this off and go back to work Monday at some level of functionality.
Assuming, of course, they don't just call me tomorrow in disgust and tell me I'm fired, which would be depressing if not disastrous.
If you have to be sick -- and there are very few of my regular readers I'm aware of that I would wish this bug I have on -- SuperGirlfriend is definitely the co-dependent of choice to have around as your support mechanism. She's been there for me every minute, taking care of me, cooking for me (when I've had an appetite, which hasnt' been often), cleaning up after me, running to the store for medications and juice, insisting I not help with anything until I get better... she's all that and a bag of chips, trust me. I am always aware of this, and I always try to show her I appreciate it, and I try to give her the same kind of support back... but when I'm sick like this, I'm helpless and dependent and a real burden to her, adding to her stress levels instead of helping alleviate them. I hate that... but I'm very glad to have her in my life.
Okay, enough of that nonsense, let's talk about HeroClix for a little while.
I just did my first trade through the trade thread over at WizKids forums online. I'd posted a list of the extra stuff I'd be willing to trade from my Collateral Damage brick, and what I wanted for it. Only three items garnered any interest at all -- Kalibak, and my Experienced and Vet Superman figs.
I can't trade the Kalibak; he's a legitimate Silver Age character, a New God, and a Jack Kirby original. I'd trade any of my Kingdom Come figs first, and I don't want to trade them simply because they're so sought after I'd never be able to replace them again. (Besides, Red Robin is an excellent piece in his own right... a much better Dr. Midnite than the recent Dr. Midnite fig we've been given, in my opinion.)
However, the Collateral Damage Superman REV is the electrically powered Superman from around, I don't know, ten to fifteen years ago (jesus, has it been that long?) and I don't like that version of the character at all, so I was fine with the idea of trading those. One particular guy offered me what seemed like an excellent deal; 4 Armor Wars figs I'd been having trouble finding -- RE Quicksilver, V Thunderball, and the Unique House of M Spider-Man, whom I happen to think has one of the more interesting and effective dials of any Spider-Man variant.
The guy didn't know me and I had no trader rating at all, so he asked me to send my stuff off first. I did it, figuring if he screwed me, well, that's life in the big city, and I could always give him a lousy feedback report on the site. If you're going to trade clix through the mail, or buy stuff off E-bay, you have to have a little trust, or you're just not going to get any where at all.
Anyway, I got his stuff yesterday, so let's talk about that:
Rookie and Experienced Quicksilver -- I wanted these figs to replace my Infinity Challenge versions of the character in my Avengers and Brotherhood of Evil Mutants diplays (not respectively), and these are the versions that have those TAs. However, when I want to use Quicksilver in an Avengers team (I play Avengers squads a lot; I love the title) I'll continue to use the Vet version, with the X-Men TA. Why? Because he's the only one with even one click of a double digit attack value. WizKids' new game designer has been rigorous in his efforts at battling power creep, which has resulted in most figs ending up with attack values of 9 and defense values around 16 or 17. That will, I suppose, be fine, when some hypothetical Pie In The Sky NeverNeverLand has been reached where everyone is playing only figs from the sets this guy has designed. Until then, though, a single figure with an 18 defense can ruin your whole day when you're stuck with a maximum 9 attack value... which the Experienced Quicksilver unfortunately is.
As to the Rookie, with the Brotherhood TA, well, with a maximum attack value of 8 he's very nearly comatose, and I'd only put him on the board if I needed to give Ulik the Troll a handy bashing weapon.
Low attack values are a pet peeve of mine with HeroClix. Characters like Daredevil, Captain America, Bullseye, Batman, Hawkeye, Green Arrow, etc, etc, are highly skilled and extremely precise attackers. You simply never, ever see them miss in the comic books, even if they are attacking four people simultaneously by bouncing a weapon off the walls of the room sixteen times. Now, HeroClix is a competitive game and you shouldn't have that level of certainty in it, but an attack value of 9 for these characters is simply absurd. These guys should all start at at least 10, and I wouldn't find an 11 to be out of line at all for most of them.
For super-speedsters, who can be presumed to be capable of hitting pretty much anyone else who isn't a super-speedster anywhere at all, at will, an attack value of 8 or 9 is straight up deranged. It's game balance nonsense pure and simple. If Quicksilver wants to hit someone, that someone is getting clocked, unless they are a super speedster themselves, or they possess some superhuman power that will prevent it (like Super Senses, which allows a character who has been hit by an attack to nonetheless avoid the attack on d6 result of 5-6).
However, as I type this, it occurs to me that under my House Rules, where HyperSonic Speed allows multiple close combat attacks, I have nearly addressed this, to a statistical degree, anyway. After all, if you need a 10 on two six sided dice to hit an opponent, you have a much better chance of doing it if you have several opportunities per turn to do it. So, that's all right... for the four or five people who play by my House Rules. For everyone else out there though, good luck with your Rookie Armor Wars Quicksilver.
Moving on, I also picked up a Veteran Thunderball. For someone who is supposed to have the power of a mini-Thor, this guy seems like kind of a wimp out. At seven clicks of life and no Impervious at all, he hardly seems like the fellow who once casually shrugged off a direct impact from Danny Rand's iron fist that knocked him a hundred yards and dug a huge trench in the ground he landed in.
In fact, within the context of the game this is nonsensical; WK gave us an Iron Fist fig in FANTASTIC FORCES and under WK's rules, he can pummel Thunderball silly even without using the iron fist, which WK simulates with Exploit Weakness, because his damage value of 3 can get past Thunderball's wretched Invulnerability without further modification. This seems an objectively inarguable mistake; we saw Thunderball take Iron Fist's best shot without being even slightly harmed, yet in HeroClix, Iron Fist can give Thunderball a black eye any time he wants. Idiotic.
There's really no excuse for the lousy dial, either. The Wrecker, Thunderball's teammate, who has nearly equal power to Thunderball, has a ten click dial that starts with 2 clicks of Impervious. The rest of the Wrecking Crew have never been depicted as being any less tough than the Wrecker; Thunderball should have the same ten clicks and at least one click of Impervious.
Beyond that, well... the Exploit Weakness nearly makes up for his rotten 3 damage value, except that everyone out there routinely slaps Fortitudes on their tougher characters, so Exploit Weakness is pretty much just an expensive joke these days. The Perplex is a pleasant, if inexplicable, surprise... no one on the Wrecking Crew is particularly perplexing, they pretty much just smash stuff... but still, overall, the fig doesn't seem to be worth the 140 points it costs to field.
However, it's a beautiful sculpt, I'll give it that.
Then we come to the Unique Spider-Man from ARMOR WARS. While this is the House of M variant, and I honestly could not care less about House of M nonsense, still, simply on the dial itself, I consider this to be one of the most effective versions of Spider-Man in the game, if not straight up THE most effective. At 72 points he's a close combat romper stomper; an opening attack value of 11 with Incapacitate, a 17 Defense with Super Senses, a damage value of 2 that increases by 2 when Spidey lands a punch or a kick due to Close Combat Expert, and that invaluable power Leap-Climb to let him whip around the board the way Spider-Man really should.
With that low a point value on his dial, he's a natural for a few Feat Cards. He has enough Incapacitate in his 8 clicks of life to make Stunning Blow a no brainer, and a few clicks of Flurry make Armor Piercing look good, too. Midway down his dial he jumps up to an 18 Defense (outstanding by itself at anytime in WK history) with Combat Reflexes, which is useless under WK's current rules (it causes automatic knockback without damage to occur whenever a fig takes damage in close combat) but which is fabulous under my House Rules, where it adds 2 to a fig's Damage Value against close combat attacks (a change WK will reportedly be making in a few months, but petulantly refusing to pay me any royalties for). That first slot with the high defense also has a 10 Attack and Incapacitate, along with Leap Climb and an 8 movement, so you can move him around and keep him adjacent to your worst enemy and make the most out of his Close Combat mods.
All told, I think he rocks out loud, so I was very disappointed to find that the fig I received in trade for my Two Man Electric Band is unplayable, due to an off-printed dial insert that causes the bottom two numbers (damage and defense) to be illegible from the third active click onward. So, that's a bummer.
WK tells me I can just send the fig back and they'll replace it, but that's on the other side of more postage and other trip to the post office, I guess.
And that's all the news here in the Highlands. But check out SuperGirlfriend's latest entry; it's dynamite.
SuperGirlfriend is one of maybe three competent people on staff at her job, and therefore does a great deal of the work in her extremely busy office, and she just couldn't take another day off so quickly after having taken some vacation time recently for Nate's visit. I, having just been hired on permanently at my job, suddenly had floating holidays I could use up, so I gave my boss puppy dog eyes and ended up staying home to take care of SuperAdorable Kid on Tuesday.
Now, I've been sick, on and off, myself for the past couple of months; I've had a nagging hacking cough that cycles up and down in frequency and phlegm content, but that I just haven't been able to fully get rid of. Add to that two museum visits in the last couple of weeks that have severely drained my physical energy reserves (staying on my feet for hours at a time, at my excessive weight, after six months of a desk job, was just exhausting) and, well, I wasn't fully charged, to say the least. And, well, I honestly had no idea just how arduous a day of taking care of an alternately hyperkinetic/miserably feverish 6 year old could be.
How SuperGirlfriend has managed this for 16 years I do not know... one day of it with SuperAdorable Kid wiped me out. I had thought I could not possibly respect and admire SuperGirlfriend any more than I already do; I had thought that upper limit had been long since reached... but it was not so. My God, childcare is brutal.
Anyway, between the emotional stress of SuperAdorable Kid being sick (which causes you to worry terribly, when you're the only caregiver, that you're going to do something stupid or wrong and break the baby and then life will really suck) and the sheer physical enervation that results from trying to keep an unusually rambunctious six year old quiet and under control when her fever isn't spiking and she wants to hang from the ceiling like a bat and fight ninjas, I was wiped out.
Which wouldn't have been all that bad -- a good night's rest would probably have fixed me up -- but then whatever it is that's causing my nagging cough decided to get all opportunistic on me. Suddenly I was feeling really punk, and despite being exhausted, I didn't sleep at all well Tuesday night, and dragged myself into work feeling (and probably looking) like death warmed over.
I got through that ten hour day -- somehow -- don't ask me how. I felt utterly wiped out for most of it, and was continually fighting the urge to just call SuperGirlfriend and have her come pick me up, but I was very aware that I probably hadn't made a great impression on my first week of permanent work taking a floating holiday so quickly, so I did my best to hang in there. And I managed it, but by the time I got out of there, I just felt horrible. Went straight home, slugged down some Nyquil, and tumbled into bed, exhausted...
...and didn't sleep much at all.
SuperGirlfriend had taken my temperature when I got home and discovered I had a 101 degree fever. That certainly contributed to keeping me awake, but mostly I just couldn't get my mind to shut down... I was worried about how I'd do at work the next day if I didn't sleep, and of course, that made it much harder for me to get to sleep... the vicious cycle that has plagued me all my life, and guaranteed that I am never well rested the day I go in for job interviews or important tests, if they are scheduled early in the morning.
Then I started having bad diarrhea last night, which continued until this morning, which also didn't help me get any sleep. So I called in sick today. I still haven't had much sleep, but I managed to catch a few hours in the late morning and early afternoon when the rest of the fam was out at school and work. Without the stress of having to go in to work tomorrow, I should sleep okay tonight... I hope! And I similarly hope that if I take it easy this weekend, I can shake most of this off and go back to work Monday at some level of functionality.
Assuming, of course, they don't just call me tomorrow in disgust and tell me I'm fired, which would be depressing if not disastrous.
If you have to be sick -- and there are very few of my regular readers I'm aware of that I would wish this bug I have on -- SuperGirlfriend is definitely the co-dependent of choice to have around as your support mechanism. She's been there for me every minute, taking care of me, cooking for me (when I've had an appetite, which hasnt' been often), cleaning up after me, running to the store for medications and juice, insisting I not help with anything until I get better... she's all that and a bag of chips, trust me. I am always aware of this, and I always try to show her I appreciate it, and I try to give her the same kind of support back... but when I'm sick like this, I'm helpless and dependent and a real burden to her, adding to her stress levels instead of helping alleviate them. I hate that... but I'm very glad to have her in my life.
Okay, enough of that nonsense, let's talk about HeroClix for a little while.
I just did my first trade through the trade thread over at WizKids forums online. I'd posted a list of the extra stuff I'd be willing to trade from my Collateral Damage brick, and what I wanted for it. Only three items garnered any interest at all -- Kalibak, and my Experienced and Vet Superman figs.
I can't trade the Kalibak; he's a legitimate Silver Age character, a New God, and a Jack Kirby original. I'd trade any of my Kingdom Come figs first, and I don't want to trade them simply because they're so sought after I'd never be able to replace them again. (Besides, Red Robin is an excellent piece in his own right... a much better Dr. Midnite than the recent Dr. Midnite fig we've been given, in my opinion.)
However, the Collateral Damage Superman REV is the electrically powered Superman from around, I don't know, ten to fifteen years ago (jesus, has it been that long?) and I don't like that version of the character at all, so I was fine with the idea of trading those. One particular guy offered me what seemed like an excellent deal; 4 Armor Wars figs I'd been having trouble finding -- RE Quicksilver, V Thunderball, and the Unique House of M Spider-Man, whom I happen to think has one of the more interesting and effective dials of any Spider-Man variant.
The guy didn't know me and I had no trader rating at all, so he asked me to send my stuff off first. I did it, figuring if he screwed me, well, that's life in the big city, and I could always give him a lousy feedback report on the site. If you're going to trade clix through the mail, or buy stuff off E-bay, you have to have a little trust, or you're just not going to get any where at all.
Anyway, I got his stuff yesterday, so let's talk about that:
Rookie and Experienced Quicksilver -- I wanted these figs to replace my Infinity Challenge versions of the character in my Avengers and Brotherhood of Evil Mutants diplays (not respectively), and these are the versions that have those TAs. However, when I want to use Quicksilver in an Avengers team (I play Avengers squads a lot; I love the title) I'll continue to use the Vet version, with the X-Men TA. Why? Because he's the only one with even one click of a double digit attack value. WizKids' new game designer has been rigorous in his efforts at battling power creep, which has resulted in most figs ending up with attack values of 9 and defense values around 16 or 17. That will, I suppose, be fine, when some hypothetical Pie In The Sky NeverNeverLand has been reached where everyone is playing only figs from the sets this guy has designed. Until then, though, a single figure with an 18 defense can ruin your whole day when you're stuck with a maximum 9 attack value... which the Experienced Quicksilver unfortunately is.
As to the Rookie, with the Brotherhood TA, well, with a maximum attack value of 8 he's very nearly comatose, and I'd only put him on the board if I needed to give Ulik the Troll a handy bashing weapon.
Low attack values are a pet peeve of mine with HeroClix. Characters like Daredevil, Captain America, Bullseye, Batman, Hawkeye, Green Arrow, etc, etc, are highly skilled and extremely precise attackers. You simply never, ever see them miss in the comic books, even if they are attacking four people simultaneously by bouncing a weapon off the walls of the room sixteen times. Now, HeroClix is a competitive game and you shouldn't have that level of certainty in it, but an attack value of 9 for these characters is simply absurd. These guys should all start at at least 10, and I wouldn't find an 11 to be out of line at all for most of them.
For super-speedsters, who can be presumed to be capable of hitting pretty much anyone else who isn't a super-speedster anywhere at all, at will, an attack value of 8 or 9 is straight up deranged. It's game balance nonsense pure and simple. If Quicksilver wants to hit someone, that someone is getting clocked, unless they are a super speedster themselves, or they possess some superhuman power that will prevent it (like Super Senses, which allows a character who has been hit by an attack to nonetheless avoid the attack on d6 result of 5-6).
However, as I type this, it occurs to me that under my House Rules, where HyperSonic Speed allows multiple close combat attacks, I have nearly addressed this, to a statistical degree, anyway. After all, if you need a 10 on two six sided dice to hit an opponent, you have a much better chance of doing it if you have several opportunities per turn to do it. So, that's all right... for the four or five people who play by my House Rules. For everyone else out there though, good luck with your Rookie Armor Wars Quicksilver.
Moving on, I also picked up a Veteran Thunderball. For someone who is supposed to have the power of a mini-Thor, this guy seems like kind of a wimp out. At seven clicks of life and no Impervious at all, he hardly seems like the fellow who once casually shrugged off a direct impact from Danny Rand's iron fist that knocked him a hundred yards and dug a huge trench in the ground he landed in.
In fact, within the context of the game this is nonsensical; WK gave us an Iron Fist fig in FANTASTIC FORCES and under WK's rules, he can pummel Thunderball silly even without using the iron fist, which WK simulates with Exploit Weakness, because his damage value of 3 can get past Thunderball's wretched Invulnerability without further modification. This seems an objectively inarguable mistake; we saw Thunderball take Iron Fist's best shot without being even slightly harmed, yet in HeroClix, Iron Fist can give Thunderball a black eye any time he wants. Idiotic.
There's really no excuse for the lousy dial, either. The Wrecker, Thunderball's teammate, who has nearly equal power to Thunderball, has a ten click dial that starts with 2 clicks of Impervious. The rest of the Wrecking Crew have never been depicted as being any less tough than the Wrecker; Thunderball should have the same ten clicks and at least one click of Impervious.
Beyond that, well... the Exploit Weakness nearly makes up for his rotten 3 damage value, except that everyone out there routinely slaps Fortitudes on their tougher characters, so Exploit Weakness is pretty much just an expensive joke these days. The Perplex is a pleasant, if inexplicable, surprise... no one on the Wrecking Crew is particularly perplexing, they pretty much just smash stuff... but still, overall, the fig doesn't seem to be worth the 140 points it costs to field.
However, it's a beautiful sculpt, I'll give it that.
Then we come to the Unique Spider-Man from ARMOR WARS. While this is the House of M variant, and I honestly could not care less about House of M nonsense, still, simply on the dial itself, I consider this to be one of the most effective versions of Spider-Man in the game, if not straight up THE most effective. At 72 points he's a close combat romper stomper; an opening attack value of 11 with Incapacitate, a 17 Defense with Super Senses, a damage value of 2 that increases by 2 when Spidey lands a punch or a kick due to Close Combat Expert, and that invaluable power Leap-Climb to let him whip around the board the way Spider-Man really should.
With that low a point value on his dial, he's a natural for a few Feat Cards. He has enough Incapacitate in his 8 clicks of life to make Stunning Blow a no brainer, and a few clicks of Flurry make Armor Piercing look good, too. Midway down his dial he jumps up to an 18 Defense (outstanding by itself at anytime in WK history) with Combat Reflexes, which is useless under WK's current rules (it causes automatic knockback without damage to occur whenever a fig takes damage in close combat) but which is fabulous under my House Rules, where it adds 2 to a fig's Damage Value against close combat attacks (a change WK will reportedly be making in a few months, but petulantly refusing to pay me any royalties for). That first slot with the high defense also has a 10 Attack and Incapacitate, along with Leap Climb and an 8 movement, so you can move him around and keep him adjacent to your worst enemy and make the most out of his Close Combat mods.
All told, I think he rocks out loud, so I was very disappointed to find that the fig I received in trade for my Two Man Electric Band is unplayable, due to an off-printed dial insert that causes the bottom two numbers (damage and defense) to be illegible from the third active click onward. So, that's a bummer.
WK tells me I can just send the fig back and they'll replace it, but that's on the other side of more postage and other trip to the post office, I guess.
And that's all the news here in the Highlands. But check out SuperGirlfriend's latest entry; it's dynamite.
Did I hear you say that there must be a catch?
Everywhere I go, everywhere I look, everything I read about our contemporary political structure in the U.S. screams one thing to me:
Somehow, we have to get the money out of the system.
Our system is inherently corrupt. If you want to run for office and win in the U.S., you need a great deal of money; if you're in office and you want to stay there -- and nearly everybody does; being an elected official in the U.S. is a fabulous gig, about as far from actually working for a living as anyone can imagine -- you need even more. None of this money necessarily goes into your own personal pockets, but you need it anyway, to pay for campaign costs -- which generally boil down to, paying for ad time on TV and radio, and paying for ad space in newspapers. (There are other expenses involved in running a campaign, but I am fairly sure that most campaign dollars go directly to the media for advertising.)
The simplest thing to do would be to straight up ban political advertising. It's a lovely idea; who among us would truly miss all of those black-background, ominously scored attack ads declaring that "Dodd Kramer kicks puppies and wants the American serviceman to go into combat barefoot" or "Sidney Campos-Waite has voted eighteen times to allow vampires to prey on the elderly residents of nursing homes throughout America"?
A simple and across the board ban on political ads would be the most effective campaign finance reform imaginable. In addition to vastly increasing the aesthetics of television during election season, it would pretty much shut down the largest legitimate cash portal in American elective politics. Take advertising costs out of the campaign equation, and suddenly politicians don't need all that much money at all. Which means they have no justification for soliciting, or receiving, all that much money at all... which makes it much harder to hide the bribes, and also denies those with more money to give from having greater access and influence than those who aren't as affluent.
There are, of course, a couple of problems with this. First, the most pragmatic one: media owners accustomed to seeing billions of dollars in PAC money funneling into their TV stations, radio stations, and newspapers during election years will scream bloody murder if anyone tries to take that money away from them. I honestly couldn't care less, but these are people of influence, and they will fight hard to keep it.
Second, and of much more concern to me -- you run into a little trouble with Amendment I of the U.S. Constitution -- "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."
Constitutional scholars (many of them on the payrolls of folks who directly benefit from our current campaign finance structure, but never mind, they may be corrupt but their analysis is still inarguable) say that "freedom of speech" of course includes the ability to buy as much airtime as one wants, with which to state any viewpoint that one desires. Therefore, any law that would keep any American citizen (say, a political candidate, or a sitting elected official) from spending as much money as they feel like on television spots, radio ads, and newspaper blurbs would be by definition unConstitutional.
As I say, that analysis is inarguable, but I still like my idea, so I will submit the following thought for consideration: the FCC is un-Constitutional. It dictates what can and cannot be broadcast via electronic media already, generally following some fairly subjective 'community standards' concepts regarding decency and proprietry and protecting the children and a lot of other stuff that sounds great, but isn't mentioned anywhere in the Constitution.
It is a curious thing about America, and Americans -- when something bothers us deeply, we will go straight to the Constitution, search it exhaustively for something that prohibits whatever it is that we dislike, and then go all the way to the Supreme Court, if necessary, to have that thing that offends us stricken down on Constitutional grounds. And if we can't find anything in the Constitution that buttresses our righteous outrage, then we start talking about 'common decency' and 'natural laws' and, you know, protecting the children.
On the other hand, if a law is enacted that doesn't bother us much, or that, in fact, most people seem to agree is a reasonably good idea, like the law establishing the Federal Communication Commission's authority over broadcasting content, we kind of shrug and move on. After all, there have to be rules. If we allowed TV stations to broadcast any kind of programming at all, without regulation (as the phrase 'freedom of speech' would seem to state is necessary), well, there would be hot chicks making out with each other 24/7 on nearly every channel, with a minority half dozen stations broadcasting The PTL Club and reruns of The Oral Roberts Power of Prayer Hour constantly to counter program.
And, you know, that would be bad.
Nonetheless, it seems to me to be fairly inarguable that government regulation of broadcasting content is un-Constitutional... provided, of course, that one defines broadcasting content as falling within the parameters of 'free speech', which I certainly think it should, as I tend to believe in the broadest possible interpretation of 'free speech'. (I'm not a big fan of our Constitution; any document that enshrines slavery and guarantees all religions a free ride is seriously flawed and badly needs a rewrite... but that's an entry for another time, perhaps. I am a big fan of free speech, though.)
So, it seems to me that if we can somehow justify government regulation of broadcast content, then we can equally justify modifying those regulations to prohibit political advertising. And if we have to equate political advertising to obscenity in order to pull this off, well, that's okay by me, too. In fact, I'd regard that as a little bonus.
Of course, without television, radio, and newspaper ads, how will people know who to vote for, or even who's running in upcoming elections? Well, here's an idea: why don't we let the people who really want to vote in elections do a little work to find out who the candidates are and what the candidates stand for? Voting is a right, of course, but I've never been inclined to think it should be one that is effortless. It strikes me that people who are politically aware will continue to apprise themselves of when elections are, who is running, and which candidate they like better. People who vote on the basis of attack ads strike me as the kind of voter our system really doesn't need; these are the sorts of people who vote for national embarrassments like Ginny Brown-Waite, Newt Gingrich, Katherine Harris and Tom DeLay.
And that other guy... what's his name... oh, yeah, George W. Bush. Although he's pretty much an international embarrassment.
This is one way to do it, within our current structure of media and campaign policy. Rule all political advertisment over broadcast media to be tantamount to obscene, and make people go out on the Internet to each candidate's website to determine who is running for what office and how they feel about various issues. This strikes me as workable, practical, and reasonable, and it's just as good a way to run elections (actually, I think it's much better, and far more civil) than our current system of essentially keeping the electorate misinformed with slanted, lying attack ads.
The other way to do it would be to tear down the broadcast media establishment from the ground up. I've always found it exasperating when people speak of advertising as 'free speech'; it isn't free, you have to pay for it, which means there is no level playing field involved, and the loudest voices will be the ones with the most money behind them. But advertising is what fuels our 'free' broadcast media (although nearly everyone I know pays for their TV nowadays anyway, through their cable provider). If we want 'free' entertainment on our TV and radio, we have to deal with commercials, because sponsors pay for it so we don't have to.
Ever since I first had the concept of 'least objectional programming' explained to me, which shows that the vast majority of TV viewers watch television so habitually and constantly that TV programmers need not put on shows that are actually good, but merely less objectionable than whatever else is on the air, because most people will not turn their TVs off as long as they are conscious and in the same room with them, I have thought there was something horribly wrong with this whole set up. We are making it much too easy for our citizenry to sedate itself with broadcast pablum.
The model I myself came up with, twenty years ago, when the 'least objectionable programming' concept was first made known to me, was to shut down broadcast TV entirely. What had been designed as 'television shows' could be put on videotape (nowadays, DVD) and people could go to a video store and pick and choose what they wanted to watch. This would, at least, require some effort and force people to use some level of judgement in what they watched, and since the model would be entirely driven by rental fees, would not require any advertisement (and personally, I'd love to see laws banning ads on videotapes, DVDs, and in movie theaters; again, if you're paying for it, it's not 'free speech'; if I'm paying to watch something, I think I have a right to decide what content gets included).
Just recently, we've started to see this model come to life, as favorite TV shows have started to immediately be collected on DVD and offered for sale to private collectors. This certainly doesn't spell the death of broadcast television or the electronic advertising industry in general; both establishments have far too much money (and therefore, influence) to go down that easily, and will most likely be with us always, or at least until there is some enormous and at this point unimaginable paradigm shift in communications technology. Nonetheless, I would be entirely in favor of absolute freedom of speech in all media, with no government regulation whatsoever, if there was no immediately accessible broadcast media. If we all had to walk down to Hollywood Video to pick out our Hot Chicks Making Out (or our PTL Club) installment for the evening, then I don't think we would need any kind of paternalistic oversight.
However, the broadcast media, and the utterly pernicious advertising industry, aren't going anywhere anytime soon. That being the case, the FCC is most likely a better idea than absolute unfettered chaos on the airwaves, and since the FCC does regulate broadcast content, which already abridges 'freedom of speech' in the electronic media, then, well, I say, let's put it to work for us cleaning up politics. Ban political advertising as 'unwelcome content by national community standards', take the cash out of the campaign system, and we will at least make the Jack Abramoffs of the future work a lot harder to hide their bribes.
Somehow, we have to get the money out of the system.
Our system is inherently corrupt. If you want to run for office and win in the U.S., you need a great deal of money; if you're in office and you want to stay there -- and nearly everybody does; being an elected official in the U.S. is a fabulous gig, about as far from actually working for a living as anyone can imagine -- you need even more. None of this money necessarily goes into your own personal pockets, but you need it anyway, to pay for campaign costs -- which generally boil down to, paying for ad time on TV and radio, and paying for ad space in newspapers. (There are other expenses involved in running a campaign, but I am fairly sure that most campaign dollars go directly to the media for advertising.)
The simplest thing to do would be to straight up ban political advertising. It's a lovely idea; who among us would truly miss all of those black-background, ominously scored attack ads declaring that "Dodd Kramer kicks puppies and wants the American serviceman to go into combat barefoot" or "Sidney Campos-Waite has voted eighteen times to allow vampires to prey on the elderly residents of nursing homes throughout America"?
A simple and across the board ban on political ads would be the most effective campaign finance reform imaginable. In addition to vastly increasing the aesthetics of television during election season, it would pretty much shut down the largest legitimate cash portal in American elective politics. Take advertising costs out of the campaign equation, and suddenly politicians don't need all that much money at all. Which means they have no justification for soliciting, or receiving, all that much money at all... which makes it much harder to hide the bribes, and also denies those with more money to give from having greater access and influence than those who aren't as affluent.
There are, of course, a couple of problems with this. First, the most pragmatic one: media owners accustomed to seeing billions of dollars in PAC money funneling into their TV stations, radio stations, and newspapers during election years will scream bloody murder if anyone tries to take that money away from them. I honestly couldn't care less, but these are people of influence, and they will fight hard to keep it.
Second, and of much more concern to me -- you run into a little trouble with Amendment I of the U.S. Constitution -- "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."
Constitutional scholars (many of them on the payrolls of folks who directly benefit from our current campaign finance structure, but never mind, they may be corrupt but their analysis is still inarguable) say that "freedom of speech" of course includes the ability to buy as much airtime as one wants, with which to state any viewpoint that one desires. Therefore, any law that would keep any American citizen (say, a political candidate, or a sitting elected official) from spending as much money as they feel like on television spots, radio ads, and newspaper blurbs would be by definition unConstitutional.
As I say, that analysis is inarguable, but I still like my idea, so I will submit the following thought for consideration: the FCC is un-Constitutional. It dictates what can and cannot be broadcast via electronic media already, generally following some fairly subjective 'community standards' concepts regarding decency and proprietry and protecting the children and a lot of other stuff that sounds great, but isn't mentioned anywhere in the Constitution.
It is a curious thing about America, and Americans -- when something bothers us deeply, we will go straight to the Constitution, search it exhaustively for something that prohibits whatever it is that we dislike, and then go all the way to the Supreme Court, if necessary, to have that thing that offends us stricken down on Constitutional grounds. And if we can't find anything in the Constitution that buttresses our righteous outrage, then we start talking about 'common decency' and 'natural laws' and, you know, protecting the children.
On the other hand, if a law is enacted that doesn't bother us much, or that, in fact, most people seem to agree is a reasonably good idea, like the law establishing the Federal Communication Commission's authority over broadcasting content, we kind of shrug and move on. After all, there have to be rules. If we allowed TV stations to broadcast any kind of programming at all, without regulation (as the phrase 'freedom of speech' would seem to state is necessary), well, there would be hot chicks making out with each other 24/7 on nearly every channel, with a minority half dozen stations broadcasting The PTL Club and reruns of The Oral Roberts Power of Prayer Hour constantly to counter program.
And, you know, that would be bad.
Nonetheless, it seems to me to be fairly inarguable that government regulation of broadcasting content is un-Constitutional... provided, of course, that one defines broadcasting content as falling within the parameters of 'free speech', which I certainly think it should, as I tend to believe in the broadest possible interpretation of 'free speech'. (I'm not a big fan of our Constitution; any document that enshrines slavery and guarantees all religions a free ride is seriously flawed and badly needs a rewrite... but that's an entry for another time, perhaps. I am a big fan of free speech, though.)
So, it seems to me that if we can somehow justify government regulation of broadcast content, then we can equally justify modifying those regulations to prohibit political advertising. And if we have to equate political advertising to obscenity in order to pull this off, well, that's okay by me, too. In fact, I'd regard that as a little bonus.
Of course, without television, radio, and newspaper ads, how will people know who to vote for, or even who's running in upcoming elections? Well, here's an idea: why don't we let the people who really want to vote in elections do a little work to find out who the candidates are and what the candidates stand for? Voting is a right, of course, but I've never been inclined to think it should be one that is effortless. It strikes me that people who are politically aware will continue to apprise themselves of when elections are, who is running, and which candidate they like better. People who vote on the basis of attack ads strike me as the kind of voter our system really doesn't need; these are the sorts of people who vote for national embarrassments like Ginny Brown-Waite, Newt Gingrich, Katherine Harris and Tom DeLay.
And that other guy... what's his name... oh, yeah, George W. Bush. Although he's pretty much an international embarrassment.
This is one way to do it, within our current structure of media and campaign policy. Rule all political advertisment over broadcast media to be tantamount to obscene, and make people go out on the Internet to each candidate's website to determine who is running for what office and how they feel about various issues. This strikes me as workable, practical, and reasonable, and it's just as good a way to run elections (actually, I think it's much better, and far more civil) than our current system of essentially keeping the electorate misinformed with slanted, lying attack ads.
The other way to do it would be to tear down the broadcast media establishment from the ground up. I've always found it exasperating when people speak of advertising as 'free speech'; it isn't free, you have to pay for it, which means there is no level playing field involved, and the loudest voices will be the ones with the most money behind them. But advertising is what fuels our 'free' broadcast media (although nearly everyone I know pays for their TV nowadays anyway, through their cable provider). If we want 'free' entertainment on our TV and radio, we have to deal with commercials, because sponsors pay for it so we don't have to.
Ever since I first had the concept of 'least objectional programming' explained to me, which shows that the vast majority of TV viewers watch television so habitually and constantly that TV programmers need not put on shows that are actually good, but merely less objectionable than whatever else is on the air, because most people will not turn their TVs off as long as they are conscious and in the same room with them, I have thought there was something horribly wrong with this whole set up. We are making it much too easy for our citizenry to sedate itself with broadcast pablum.
The model I myself came up with, twenty years ago, when the 'least objectionable programming' concept was first made known to me, was to shut down broadcast TV entirely. What had been designed as 'television shows' could be put on videotape (nowadays, DVD) and people could go to a video store and pick and choose what they wanted to watch. This would, at least, require some effort and force people to use some level of judgement in what they watched, and since the model would be entirely driven by rental fees, would not require any advertisement (and personally, I'd love to see laws banning ads on videotapes, DVDs, and in movie theaters; again, if you're paying for it, it's not 'free speech'; if I'm paying to watch something, I think I have a right to decide what content gets included).
Just recently, we've started to see this model come to life, as favorite TV shows have started to immediately be collected on DVD and offered for sale to private collectors. This certainly doesn't spell the death of broadcast television or the electronic advertising industry in general; both establishments have far too much money (and therefore, influence) to go down that easily, and will most likely be with us always, or at least until there is some enormous and at this point unimaginable paradigm shift in communications technology. Nonetheless, I would be entirely in favor of absolute freedom of speech in all media, with no government regulation whatsoever, if there was no immediately accessible broadcast media. If we all had to walk down to Hollywood Video to pick out our Hot Chicks Making Out (or our PTL Club) installment for the evening, then I don't think we would need any kind of paternalistic oversight.
However, the broadcast media, and the utterly pernicious advertising industry, aren't going anywhere anytime soon. That being the case, the FCC is most likely a better idea than absolute unfettered chaos on the airwaves, and since the FCC does regulate broadcast content, which already abridges 'freedom of speech' in the electronic media, then, well, I say, let's put it to work for us cleaning up politics. Ban political advertising as 'unwelcome content by national community standards', take the cash out of the campaign system, and we will at least make the Jack Abramoffs of the future work a lot harder to hide their bribes.
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