Beantown a Mean Town for Some

Boston looks to tweak, not replace...no surprise here. In yesterday's preliminary municipal election, virtually all of us can claim prescience. Most figured it would be incumbent Mayor Tom Menino against City Councilor Michael Flaherty in the mayoral final. Likewise, we had a pretty good set of guesses for the final eight of the 15 running for the four council seats.

Yawn.

Then again, not yawn. The final six weeks to the November 3rd general starts from a new gate. Befuddled and overwhelmed voters get less information overload and will largely go to the polls with a sense of the final candidates.

Left Ahead! plug: Catch us at our streaming site here at 2:30 Eastern on Thursday for commentary on Boston and the few other elections around. If you can listen live and want to call in with local news or opinions, use (718) 664-6966. Push 1 on your phone keypad to let us know you want to talk. We'll try to get to you quickly.

I grieved in advance over mayoral candidate City Councilor Sam Yoon's third place finish.

The Globe ran figures online and in print. The online when I saw it a few minutes ago kept the inexplicable error on Tito Jackson's returns (listing 45,880 instead of his 12, 520) that would have had him topping the ticket insted of coming in sixth. Perhaps that was because they endorsed him; seriously, some fat fingers blew that.

Writing of, the council endorsements are the proverbial reminder of how poorly our biggest daily directs voters. The Globe had the first four easy ones, incumbents John Connolly and Steve Murphy with Felix Arroyo and Ayanna Pressley. Three of their picks fell far sort — Ego Ezedi, Hiep Nguyen and Robert Fortes. They called for Tito Jackson, who'll need some serious oomph to climb to the final four. On raw endorsement to vote results, that's 62.5%, fine for baseball, but not punditry. The season's too short, with only two games.

Over at Civic Boston, Chris Lovett loves the absolute numbers. He breaks down the differences among various prelims here.

I had a few thoughts and feelings Monday and hold to them. For one, Flaherty is going to have to start giving voters compelling reasons to leave the comfort zone of Menino's avuncular hug. Despite a generation span, he's too much like him.

Likewise, over at Talking Politics, David Bernstein, ran his quick hits on the vote. I particularly liked and second his judgment that Yoon flew high in coming from relative obscurity to a solid third. Also, Bernstein's view that "He is now unshackled from the city council, and can spend the next few years doing something of actual use to the city. Then, if Menino calls it quits after winning one more term, Yoon is in perfect position to lead the scrum to succeed him."

Of moment in the council race is the likely flying elbows for the fourth seat. Felix Arroyo probably has three in the bag. There's a vague possibility that Tito Jackson or Tomas Gonzalez can come on strong, but I doubt it.

I also figure that it's between Pressley and Kenneally. She did better in the preliminary, but not knock-out better (9% to 7% of the vote). That was with her many endorsements that seemed to ride on her plank-like-pitches — I'm a woman and a woman of color; the council needs some of me, and I'm chummy at the Congressional level with former bosses Rep. Joe Kennedy and Sen. John Kerry.

We-like-Ayanna time is over. As with Flaherty, she'll have to get out of her own comfort zone and put up positions and details that she'll have to debate and defend. She's both bright and sweet and that will be tough for her.

Having interviewed both, I do prefer Kenneally. Now that everyone has gotten over that he had a benign brain tumor cut out, he needs to focus us on justifying yet another Irish-American councilor. He has lots of reasons, vast experience in and out of our city council, and very specific plans and policies. He needs to make a big deal out of the distinctions.

I'm going to enjoy both of these races.

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Tags: massmarrier, Boston, Kenneally, Pressley,City Council, preliminary, mayor, Menino, Flaherty, Yoon

Boston Political Reaper Tomorrow

Not endorsing and not predicting the Boston preliminary races has been really tough. I've had my choices for quite a bit, but this odd off-the-neck and over-the-ears trimming for the Nov. 3rd general does not lend itself to picks.

You can see how badly the Boston Globe blew it with its at-large council endorsements. In particular, they bypassed Andrew Kenneally. I spoke with him in June and went through his material and listened to his stumps as well. The Globe's board went with the two incumbent Irish-American councilors, but picked several several unproven candidates with far less expertise and experience than Kenneally. Numerous cynical observers have commented to me that it's obvious we could use some more racial, gender and cultural diversity on the Council, so the Globe was afraid to pick three white guys. Maybe it is that simple.

I hope he makes the eight candidates for November. For both the mayor and council spots, that six weeks to the general means a whole new campaign and the chance to distinguish platform and personality. It's exhausting to consider even as a spectator.

The mayoral race is odder still, with four major candidates. Perhaps the oddest aspect of all is how the three challengers have appeared so many times in the past two weeks together to accuse Mayor Menino of this or that. I am positive that will make it harder for voters to differentiate one from another when the three are in the get-Tom gang. That is likely to be an advantage for the presumptive leader of trio, who is of course, Irish-American Michael Flaherty.

In many ways, he is more like Menino than Sam Yoon or Kevin McCrea is. If it's Mike and Tom in the last month and a half, it's going to be real hard for Flaherty to provide compelling reasons to dump the devil we know. While he does have different and better ways to do somethings, he'll have a short time to present a preponderance of these to win.

If it were to be Yoon, he'd have a clearer path, but one just as tough. He has steadily pitched systematic change, and in great detail. He's damned smart but he has pulled out a real big pill for voters to swallow. Yoon makes a lot of sense, but are there enough voters who are serious about taking a chance on new ways of governing?

The winnowing tomorrow will set the tone for Boston for years to come. Coupled with the finals in November, this is one of those political cliché moments. We are headed for the government we deserve.

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Tags: massmarrier, Boston, Kenneally, City Council, preliminary, mayor, Menino, Flaherty, Yoon

Prelim Podcast to Thursday

Lynne, Ryan and I (a.k.a. Left Ahead) have bumped our podcast this week two days to Thursday, for this week only. The live stream is at the same time though, 2:30 p.m. Eastern.

Later, you can catch it at the same URL or at Left Ahead in a post or archives.

We figured we'd let the vote counts settle. We'll be ready Thursday to talk results. Several cities and towns, such as Worcester and Lowell, dropped their preliminaries to save money or for want of competition. That puts even more attention on Boston's mayoral and council races.

If you can listen live and want to call in with local news or opinions, use (718) 664-6966. Push 1 on your phone keypad to let us know you want to talk. We'll try to get to you quickly.

Note: The call-in is a New York number and not the nearby 781 area code.

It Not Be Too Late, Matey

Aaar. bilge rats and wenches. This be Talk Like a Pirate Day, but Hyde Park be missing the salt and salty talk. Let's go back two years:

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Avast Ye Lubbers and Sea Dogs!

This be Talk Like a Pirate Day. Step lively and load your canon with pirate phrases!

Scurvy curs under the Golden Dome (arrr, gold) and merchant varmints purloin your purse all year...without raising the Jolly Roger in fair warning. Curses be on them!

Put in your largest earring and let there be swagger as you walk the decks at work.

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Tags: massmarrier, Talk Like a Pirate

Da Mare's in Clover

Attrition in the Boston mayoral race has dulled the edge of outrage. Sixteen-year, longest-serving ever Mayor Tom Menino was supposed to be in biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiig trouble for avoiding public debates, as has been his wont. He seems to have yielded just barely enough to stay in pasture and eat his political fill.

Even this blog joined in early on the demands for hard talk on hard issues, like here. While he admits and seems to embrace in a folksy way that he's not a fancy talker, Da Mare got a huge load of duck again, as he's ducking debates, like four years ago.

Also like four years ago, he seems to have hummed and muttered his way through. I conclude that so long as voters aren't shut off from all debate, a snack of opinion and information is all they need. The banquet to satiation is of little interest.

Today as one indicator, even the two mayor dailies are in line with his program. He skipped the final public forum last night at English High. The Globe runs a story on that — in its section two (Metro) on page five and not at the top. Even the head is passive for him, not that the mayor ducked the show, but "Mayoral candidates take aim at Menino", almost like he's a victim here. Likewise, the Herald tucked its Where's Mayor Menino this time? well inside. Neither paper teased the piece on its front. In the Herald instead, its first page had:

• Fall Real Estate Extravaganza
• Jets trash talking the Pats
• Fall TV shows
• Boston Home Show preview
• A big lead with two pix of murdered youth Jeffrey Curley's dad furious at efforts to furlough the killer

I guess this is what we call editorial judgment, eh?

Menino, likely with staff advice, has racked up enough public points to stay in pasture. He was on a couple debates and forums. So there.

Perhaps this is like how we say we want lots of choices. Then at the grocery store when we can't find the damned cornflakes in the cavalcade of cereal boxes, we're annoyed. We want what we want, but not too much, please.

If I had the time and lacked family obligations, I could willingly career from one debate and speech to another. That's sick, but it's my bent. Understandably though, most voters have a pretty low hunger for frequency and depth in discourse.

Thinking back to the Ray Flynn/Mel King mayoral fight (that would be 26 years ago), those were grand times for public airing. The pair mirrored Flynn's chasing of fire trucks and patrol cars to emergencies. They ran together like harnessed sled dogs, stopping to bark it up in every neighborhood, answering all questions from all comers. We haven't seen the like since.

Maybe we're tired, worn by money fears and terrorist thoughts, as well as myriad local issues. Maybe things here just aren't bad enough to demand non-stop debating. Maybe we are more unified behind citywide issues and less focused on sub-neighborhood ones.

Whatever the causes, voters are not screaming for Menino to stand up to his three challengers at every call and dare. To me, that's still a pity, but let's invoke the ghost of comic Lenny Bruce, who often said, "Reality is what is. What should be is a dirty lie."

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Tags: massmarrier, Massachusetts, Boston, Menino, Sam Yoon, McCrea, debate, mayor, Flaherty

From the Jawbones of Asses

As sure as it's still OK to ridicule Spandex wearers and fat people, Massachusetts Republicans have their pathetic shticks:

1. Elect us because we're the only way to hold down those tax-and-spend Dems
2. We'll never steal your, again your, money by raising taxes

A current expression is convenience-store princeling and would-be governor Christy Mihos' absurd bluster on a possible interim appointment for U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy's vacant seat. Assuming Gov. Deval Patrick gets the right to appoint a temp between now and the Jan. 19th special election and assuming he picks ex-Gov. Michael Dukakis, the pop-and-soda guy says it would be a huge boost to the GOP here, reminding voters of the Taxachusetts era. "Go ahead - make my day, Politically I hope they do this. It will give us another arrow in our quiver to show them for what they are."

Not raising taxes when required to fix the commonwealth's infrastructure has been the worst blunder of modern times in the Bay State. Joined and often led by cowardly and self-interested Dems, they refused to generate the revenue necessary for road and bridge repairs, other transit improvements (including track and high-speed rail preparations), and other low-visibility essentials.

The result has been an accumulating bill like those for the people who don't exercise or eat right and who refuse to visit the doctor or dentist until they are in big trouble. The costs for those delayed infrastructure essentials have soared and have gone from millions to billions.

Meanwhile, donkeys and elephants alike here have largely rolled through re-elections on that promise of I'll never raise your taxes. Thanks a bunch, you short-sighted and dishonest pols.

To their discredit, the Democratic Party has not made it plain that fiscal responsibility definitely does not include deferring the necessary until it is critical. With a heavy sigh, I admit that is likely in recognition of how many Dems play the never-raise-taxes game to get re-elected too.

In fairness, along with his high intellect and far-reaching political vision, Mike Dukakis will forever represent two negatives to many voters — Taxachusetts and that damned tank picture.

Back in the real world, we should ask whether he would be a good stand-in for Kennedy with crucial health-care and other votes coming up before the middle of January. That answer is clearly yes, which must annoy and terrify our local GOP types.

In contrast, they have set themselves apart as the the anti-Kennedys. After decades of slamming and slandering Ted's goals, they don't have anyone who stands for his values. Dukakis, with his two burdens, does. I don't know that Gov. Patrick would have the courage to appoint the Duke and come down like Samson with the donkey's jawbone on the sillies.

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Tags: massmarrier, Massachusetts, Kennedy, Dukakis, interim, Mihos, Deval Patrick

Not-My-Job Coakley

Alas, I want to like Martha Coakley as potential replacement for U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy. He's dead and she's lifeless though.

In our last couple of Left Ahead! podcast sessions, we commented on the various candidates, including her. As in yesterday's show, I can't shake that she has never really done her job as AG. So, we're supposed to think that because she's running an aggressive campaign for Senate that she's primed and ready?

This morning's Herald report is yet more evidence that she is not. It's yet another AG job that she has not done and has no intention of doing. So there.

Her comments include:

“Particularly understanding this is the middle of a campaign, we get lots of complaints from folks who are adversaries who have a particular agenda,” Coakley said, referring to the request by Menino’s challengers for a criminal probe of potentially hundreds of public e-mails deleted by Menino policy chief Michael Kineavy.

She behaved similarly with the scandals and charges around state Sen. Dianne Wilkerson, Boston City Councilor Chuck Turner and House Speaker Sal DiMasi. In those cases, it was the feds who took over and did her job.

Coakley fairly leaped over the starting gate in the race for the Senate spot. She has long been angling for a bigger, better, more prominent job and seems to figure this is it. She snatched up Emily's list and numerous union endorsements. Apparently those groups don't care for performance, just promises.

Numerous critics and certain Senate-race rival U.S. Rep. Michael Capuano have noted that she has no public platform or positions, and no related experience. Coupled with her unwillingness to do her current job, I need a lot more than she wants Kennedy's seat real badly to consider her. Being a lethargic AG is no credential.

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Tags: massmarrier, Massachusetts, Kennedy, Capuano, attorney general, Coakley, emails

Kicking a Support from DOMA

U.S. Rep. Jerry Nadler, a New York Dem, undermined the Defense of Marriage Act with his Respect for Marriage bill today. He figures progressives and civil-rights types can't dump DOMA immediately, but they can remove its pillars one at a time.

His bill would give federal recognition to legal same-sex marriages. It would not do the same for domestic partnerships or civil unions. It would replace the one-man/one-woman definition of marriage with:

§ 7. Marriage
(a) For the purposes of any Federal law in which
marital status is a factor, an individual shall be considered
married if that individual’s marriage is valid in the State
where the marriage was entered into or, in the case of
a marriage entered into outside any State, if the marriage
is valid in the place where entered into and the marriage
could have been entered into in a State.
(b) In this section, the term ‘State’ means a State,
the District of Columbia, the Commonwealth of Puerto
Rico, or any other territory or possession of the United
States.

Among the wee surprises at Nadler's announcement were that President Obama did not attend and that openly gay Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank is not among the 90 co-sponsors. The Blade reports:

Frank said in an interview Friday with the Blade that he’s not a co-sponsor of the legislation because he has a “strategic difference” with those supporting the repeal legislation.

“It’s not anything that’s achievable in the near term,” he said. “I think getting [the Employment Non-Discrimination Act], a repeal of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,’ and full domestic partner benefits for federal employees will take up all of what we can do and maybe more in this Congress.”

Frank also said that advocacy for the “certainty provision,” as described by Nadler, would create “political problems” in Congress.

From first glance, it appears more like a case of NIH, not invented here by Frank. To me, this is a further shame to DOMA that Congress would have to pass a law reminding states that comity is the norm in our nation. Bay Windows has more analysis on Frank's objections here.

Nadler said he expects scare tactics by those opposed to DOMA's repeal, including claims that this will force SSM on states with their own mini-DOMA laws or amendments or both.

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Tags: massmarrier, Nadler, Respect for Marriage, Obama, DOMA, same-sex marriage

The Actual Mayor's Race

I'm not quite sure how many drinks the Globe and Herald reporters had before or during last night's debate. The former' take was In debate, foes blast Menino’s tight grip and the latter's Foes pummel Mayor Menino in debate. Such hyperbole belongs on the sports page, where an 11 to 10 Sox victory would be a thrashing.

The big takeaway is that none of the three challengers knocked out Da Mare. We are looking at two questions now:

1. Will Michael Flaherty or Sam Yoon come in second, getting the other slot on the November 3rd ballot?
2. Will the surviving challenger unsheathe the worthy weapons for the real race in the last month and a half?

The second looks more iffy right now. Last evening, all three challengers sang their one song. Each seemed to have benefited from practice, but the lyrics were the same. Flaherty looked much less frightened than he did in the first TV debate. McCrea was not as loose with accusations. Yoon did not wave like an eager school kid with the right answer. Their content was pretty much as expected.

The only real failure of the evening was McCrea's puerile taunt. He set up the strawman of attempting to prove he would do a better job improving schools by spending a day each week visiting individual ones. That turned into a revisited and re-revisited challenge for each of the three others to do the same. That kind of playground trick almost always backfires. Wave the pledge you wrote and dare the other kids to sign it. When nobody bought, he should have dropped it. He seemed to be the only one who thought that was real clever.

It would have been great to sense real vision by the challengers. After all, each of them points to what they define as major shortcomings in the city. In some cases, they suggest specific ways to improve this or that. However, the only big-picture painted was by Yoon on transportation. He had the guts to suggest we need to do everything we can to accommodate non-motorized vehicular traffic.

Oddly, it as McCrea and not Menino who picked up on and piggybacked on that. The mayor, after all, has lead on cycling efforts. He should have drawn a future of quieter, cleaner, less congested Boston streets filled with ped and cycle traffic instead of cars. It was McCrea during the parking question who said, "Boston shouldn't be about suburban commuters. It should be about the people who live in the city."

He won't make the cut. Whether it ends up being Yoon or Flaherty on September 22nd, he needs to have better tools than he's brought to the workbench so far for the real race. Give us a vision and a path...or inertia wins.

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Tags: massmarrier, Massachusetts, Boston, Menino, Sam Yoon, McCrea, debate, mayor, Flaherty

Boston Song Out of Yoon

Boston mayoral candidate Sam Yoon was his intelligent, intense and sincere self yesterday evening. At a small gathering of bloggers, he hosted, held forth, and made strong statements.

His key proposal was for a way to fix the strong-mayor/weak-council government he regularly blames for what ails us. Adam Gaffin of Universal Hub covered both the abstract and particulars of that well here.

At every stump speech, forum and debate, Yoon decries that everything must pass through Menino's hands to happen. The contradiction in his call is not lost on him though. He quickly points out that changing this will initially take a strong mayor to drive the legal and statutory changes necessary to define and structure a weaker mayor.

His vision here is more than the linchpin to his campaigning. He wants more than simply sharing more power with City Council. For one example, he shares the conclusion that the payment-in-lieu-of-taxes (PILOT) program for colleges and other non-profits cheats the city of revenue. The two other mayoral challengers to Tom Menino, Michael Flaherty and Kevin McCrea, agree.

However, Yoon ties this to the strong-mayor issue. Speaking of PILOT, he said, "These hings happen in a black box. That has to change." He figures if the public is in on the negotiations with, say Northeastern, the city will get a better agreement and more cash annually.

I had to cut out for family obligations, so I was the first to leave Flash's yesterday. Others of the five bloggers there may have more goodies.

So, today when I had some time, I did check the followup to comments Yoon's press secretary, Jordan Newman, made before the candidate arrived. He was really upbeat, noting that August was Yoon's best fund-raising month ever. He said the campaign beat those of the other candidates. He attributed that to "people are seeing this as really obtainable."

That drove me, the old newspaper drone, to the numbers. Sure enough, the August filings show healthy receipts and balances heading into the September 22nd primary.

Ice Water Splash: Examining the figures should always note that Mayor Menino has at least an order of magnitude greater cash in his campaign account, with more on the side to drop in if necessary. None of the guys can imagine they will outspend him in the primary or general. They have to capture the voters' aspirations and fears with more than advertising or paid campaigners. We think of Cassius' epithet for Caesar — Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world like a Colossus.

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Everybody can play

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However, the receipts and cash make this race look competitive enough. Apparently, Menino was aware enough of this that on the last day of August, he dropped $300,000 from his other account into his campaign fund.

I toted the figures from those reported to the state. For August, I had:

Flaherty
August in 60,810.79
August out 99,260.93
End balance 39,133.81

McCrea
August in 0.00
August out 3,525.00
End balance 33,467.34

Menino
August in 381,756.36
August out 103,836.05
End balance 807,527.22


Yoon
August in 86,100.50
August out 75,373.78
End balance 58,167.54

We can't draw definitive conclusions from those figures. We can see that everyone has cash to spend and that everyone but McCrea is hard at work raising contributions. We can also see why Newman was heartened by the cash flow.

I believe we can assume with confidence that our longest-serving and popular mayor will be one of the two challengers headed to the November general election. We can be nearly as sure that McCrea has made his criticism and gotten his points aired, but not to the extent that he'll advance.

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Who's convinced?

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Between Yoon and Flaherty, it is now a real question which will live politically to advance. The stereotype would have the Irish-American with the long list of big unions endorsing him thrash the wonky Korean-American. Yet, this doesn't seem an election of clichés in the flesh.

Yoon has a shot. It remains to be seen how many voters he's convinced that he's that change they want, the way to bump up Boston's commonweal.

In terms of contenders, all three claim they are the pilot to steer to a newer, better Boston. They want to trash the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA), putting development decisions in the hands of the Council and citizens. Yet this becomes a question of whom would you trust.

Unfortunately for the contenders, Boston is not in terrible shape. Schools could surely be better, crime certainly lower and housing more affordable. Yet, none of the big areas is terrible enough to make the voters scream for Menino's head. The three challengers say, "We can do better," and present their ways of doing that.

On the face of it, McCrea is the revolutionary candidate. Yet his sometimes abrasive presentation couple with some loose fact-like-claims in the big debate and his lack of government experience. In contrast, Flaherty may be a little too vague on the details and a little too unsure on the procedure. Then Yoon's positions require voter focus.

During the televised debate, my wife cringed and commented several times when Yoon made his arguments. She pointed out that he spoke naturally and was obviously bright. However, he used many terms such as i.e. and antithesis. She figures that would stop some voters' brains and turn off others.

Yoon has good positions and offers clear paths to the ends he proposes. His cash flow suggests that more voters are listening enough to be convinced. The question remains whether there will be enough to lift him to number two in the primary tally.

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Tags: massmarrier, Massachusetts, Boston, Menino, Sam Yoon, McCrea, debate, mayor, Flaherty

Health Care, How Care: Part 3

Of course men and women are sensitive and even paranoid about problems with their primary and secondary sex characteristics. For example, cancers of the breast, prostate, ovary or testicle have strong emotional and identity components.

Text Notice: This post is not sexual but does contain mentions of nether region body parts.

Series Links: Part 1 on hip replacement is here and Part 2 on shoulder surgery is here. Also, this is cross-posted at Harrumph!.

Thus, you can likely imagine my distress at severe pain in my right testicle during my first year of marriage. The agony was frequent and daily. It often immobilized me and doubled me over as well. I imported my new wife to my tiny bachelor apartment and moved to a larger one also in the West Village. This was not a good omen for our new lives.

In my 20s, I knew I was at prime age for testicular cancer. That has a much higher morality rate than breast cancer and most others. Such a diagnosis would have been particularly grim three decades ago.

Yet, being a typical member of my family, I did not hide, but staggered to the doctor to face the diagnosis of whatever it was. Instead of physical and emotional relief, I experienced months of continuing pain and uncertainty. Also, the process further diminished my dwindling respect for doctors in general.

I went from what we used to call a GP to an internist to a urologist to a proctologist. There were numerous x-rays, scans and other diagnostic tools, hard and soft-tissue. In particular, I remember two sessions of tears-to-the-eyes prostate milking for testable fluids.

The weeks passed in slow and too vivid spasms, literally and figuratively. Multiple doctors had no cures and no causes. My wife and I remained nervous. Plus the time and money costs mounted.

This ended up not being one of the chronicles of dogged diagnosis the Sunday New York Times Magazine or the TV series House feature though. In contrast, there was a specific problem and remedy, one that illustrates another reason to be skeptical about medical treatment.

Coincidental to the agony of the right testicle was a follow-up on my shoulder dislocations that had been under control since the introduction of the chest expander. The neurologist who was checking for internal damage up top found the problem below.

My tests for him were fine and he was a trifle bored after the quick session. Then he asked whether there was anything thing else. Suspecting he could do nothing the gang of other generalists and specialists had failed at, I said something about my painful right nut.

He seemed to light up and asked for some of the information the other doctors had gotten. He was particularly interested to hear that we had recently moved. He asked if I carried heavy furniture and I noted that there was a huge oak and Masonite desktop that I protected my much smaller wife from handling because of its weight. I had discussed the marriage and move with the other docs, who dismissed such personal detail as meaningless.

He then asked me to turn around and lower my trousers. My testicle was in moderate to high pain at that moment, but he changed that. He placed his thumb firmly on a spot in the lower back and gave me instant relief.

He had properly and precisely figured that I had severely strained major nerves from the spine leading directly into the scrotum. What would now be called acupressure proved his hypothesis.

Moreover, he pulled down a chart and out an anatomy book. Those nerves run like two huge hands with very long fingers from sacral vertebrae 2, 3 and 4 directly into the external genitalia. The major pudendal nerve structure was the cause of the pain.

My immediate question to him was why didn't the large set of other doctors think of that. He allowed as that was a very good question, as the nerve plexus and geography are very basic anatomy they all had taken.

My solution was treating the damaged nerves with rest, massage, heat and cold. All the years later, I can still cause a flareup with macho behavior, but I know what to do for relief.

This instance at least did not lead to recommendations for unnecessary surgery and I did get relief. However, the months of fretting and pain were avoidable through what seems to be reasonable competence by the previous medical guys.

I am not a litigious sort and have never sued a doctor. However, given my experiences with bumbling diagnoses, I am not too sympathetic with plaints of the medical types over what they say are unfair suits and resulting high malpractice premiums.

No doubt, some people try to make big bucks off others for the smallest reason, or no reason. On the other hand, shunting patients into unneeded surgeries and other treatments because of incompetent or lazy diagnoses may be all too common.

Medical doctors in the main enjoy, expect and demand high status and income in this society. As G Love has sung, "You got to earn it to own it."

Tags: massmarier, New York, health care, doctors, neurology, pain

Healey: No Guts, No Loyalty

In a state rife with DINOs, high-profile RINOs can be a welcome counterbalance. Unfortunately, our vacuous ex-lieutenant governor Kerry Healey has neither courage nor party loyalty in her decision to announce and un-announce her decision to run for Ted Kennedy's vacant U.S. Senate seat.

Speaking only to the Associated Press and not the Massachusetts media, she used the spongiest of excuses. "After careful consideration, however, I have decided that a campaign would not be in the best interest of my family at this time.’"

That's amusing in a silly political way too. It is the cloth that disgraced politicians hold up when they are caught. She is not hiding from scandal though. Rather, she really can't be bothered. Also from the outside, it appears as though she figures accurately she'd get her coif handed to her by any of a number of Dems who'll give it a real shot.

As much as I join in the easy ridicule of the local GOP party-ette, this is a grand chance to put it out there for party and principle...if only she had either. Healey, you might notice, is a woman as well as nominal Republican. She was not the first of her gender to be looey here, following the bumbling and equally arrogant Jane Swift in the office. However, she was elected, not appointed, although her only real experience was as head of the state GOP and that for only a short time.

Pretending that the Dems here are all progressives and lefties, our Republicans often hide in the other party. That is practical for election purposes of hypocritical and cowardly pols. I question the strategy, which seem based on individual offices. If those pols who really believe in the national and state GOP platforms shed their donkey skins, wouldn't they give the less-left-leaning voters a real choice, rather than making them decode when it comes time to vote? Wouldn't that provide a real two-party (with lots of fractional minors) instead of Dems and DINOs?

So, Healey has her chance to lead her party's battle here. Even if it meant defeat on January 19th for the special election, it would have been for the good of the commonwealth as well as her nominal party.

Instead, we have lesser known possibles with less money and fewer connections to fight. They may have more guts and party loyalty, but they have weaker chances. In fact, DINO U.S. Rep. Stephen Lynch (who wears the badge of conservative Dem) will likely run and stands more of a chance of winning and representing the GOP views than any of them.

Healey has never been a leader or heroine and is not about to start. She is a wealthy woman married to a wealthy man. She seems to have more emotionally pulling if more trivial things to do. Her privileged status may be the stuff of GOP ideal, all except for the courage of convictions and advancing the party.

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Tags: massmarrier, Healey, Senate, RINO, Lynch, Massachusetts

Health Care, How Care: Part 2

Aspects of our daily American lives call out for trust. We need to believe that our food is safe for one. Likewise, we long for the days when we just knew for sure that doctors could fix what ailed us.

With this nation now consumed with thoughts of health care, it is not always best to divorce the subject from the personal. This is the second of a multipart post relating my wee private experiences in the wonderful world of medicine, a field too often conflated with medical science. Part 1 on not having hip-replacement surgery is here. I’ll cross-post this at Harrumph!

Now, let’s consider my shoulder operation.

In my early 20s, I was used to full shoulder dislocations. While there is a cliché that swimming is an injury-free sport, ask a swimmer. I had been a breaststroker, which tends to bring with it damaged knees and shoulders, including dislocations. Both of us on the high school team ended up with full dislocations in which the shoulder would pop out of joint. Joel’s went up by his ear and mine down by my rib cage.

With the nerve, ligament, tendon and muscle damage, the pain of each dislocation is, how shall we put it, exquisite.

Moreover, I had very stupidly body surfed at the tail-end of a hurricane out in the Hamptons on Long Island. Catching a great wave, I jetted well over dry sand, only to find my fingers embedded like a spearhead while my body continued. That wrenched the shoulder into its components.

The catalyst for getting the dreadful modified Putti Platt procedure came less than two years later. I was helping a girlfriend move apartments. As it happened she was a Ph.D. in medicine and the woman with us was an M.D. They both saw me turn white from the pain as my shoulder popped down below the joint. I was wearing a tee shirt and they being medical sorts knew exactly what was up (or down).

The pain was blindingly intense. All I could think of was lessening the tearing of the body parts by getting the ball back in the socket. I grabbed my misplaced right upper arm with my left hand and pushed it away from my ribs. Sure enough, this caused the ball to be sucked back into the socket or rather yielded to the straining muscles to relocate it. In that moment, I went from agony to bearable severe pain.

Time for the big fix

My companion said it was time, past time, to stop avoiding the surgery just because I had never had any operations. Moreover, she did her research at NYU Medical and knew the best orthopedic people or professors who knew them. I had an inside track to the best evaluation and cutting.

She wangled an appointment with a famous joint surgeon for the evaluation. He literally wrote the books.

That didn’t start well. The man was a serious artiste. He heard my tale and quickly and very firmly informed me that I was totally wrong, that I could never have relocated the shoulder solo. In fact, he pulled out a text on orthopedics what proved that in writing. I would have had to have gone to a hospital, had weights applied to the limb and let the doctors guide the joint into alignment.

I looked at the front of the book to discover that he was the author, the expert. Yes, indeed, his circular citation was to convince me that my experience had no validity. My laughing surprised him but did nothing to change his mind. However, when he learned that the two witnesses had an M.D. and Ph.D. in medicine between them, he allowed as how this might be the first such case he had ever heard of for self-relocation.

Regardless, he did agree that the big cut and shortening of muscles and tendons was the only way to go. However, he limited his surgeries to wrists and hands, so he wasn’t the guy.

My girlfriend though personally knew the head of ortho at NYU Medical. He agreed to supervise the operation, unofficially doing it though the residents nominally performed these.

I was resigned, sort of. I was quite the drama queen about this, even having to travel to St. Vincent’s emergency room nearly my West Village apartment with the shakes a couple of nights before entering the hospital. Another girlfriend was there and went with me, only to hear that it was sheer nerves.

There was the tableau like a Viking funeral in the small hospital ward. I thought little of it because I was being so self-centered, but in retrospect it was absurd and theatrical for a small parade of current and former girlfriends visiting before the surgery to wish me well and bring me treats. Several of the men in the other beds later commented on how nobody was visiting them and I had enough attention for everyone.

The night before the operation, a nurse shaved my chest and arm. Then in the morning, they painted me with iodine solution and drugged me (demerol maybe?). The drug was powerful and I recall being paralyzed as they wheeled me to the operating room. The ceiling needed scraping and painting all the way down the long corridors.

Then in my diminished capacity I had the realization that my surgeon, the head of the department, should have been in scrubs, but I saw him walking toward me in street clothes. Wearing his wonderful, full smile too, he slapped me on my good shoulder before talking. He said they had discovered an infection two beds down and could not risk opening up my pecs and shoulder. He was sending me home.

My medical girlfriend was at her apartment a few blocks south. When I could dress and walk, I went to tell her. It was a tiny Rashomon moment. I ranted at high volume and speed, displaying my anger at being finally emotionally and intellectually ready for the scalpel, only to be cast out. She recalls as clearly that because of my heavy sedative and painkiller, I spoke and moved in extreme slow motion. It was all she could do to keep from laughing at me.

One would suppose given the seriousness and randomness of the dislocations, I would head in as soon as I could. However, a wreck intervened. While visiting a high-school chum in New Jersey, I was a passenger in his car when a drunk hit us as we parked. My friend got a broken hip but I just had another dislocation.

Another high-school acquaintance was a lawyer who advised us, telling me to get my shoulder looked at. I didn’t think that was necessary, but he convinced me. He sent me to an unusual orthopedic surgeon, one who specialized in children and one who didn’t like to cut unless necessary.

Until those visits, I had heard only the three different operations to prevent recurrent shoulder dislocations. The wrinkles were things like whether they also put in effect a hook and eye in the ball and socket to keep them mechanically fixed. No doctor had said there was any non-surgical alternative.

The cheap solution

This doctor, however, fixed me with a $25 chest expander — four large springs on two handle grips — like they advertised in the the back of comic books. Using it for long periods daily in effect did what Putti Platt’s operation went for. Tightening the pecs and tendons made it much, much less likely that the ball would disengage from the socket. I also learned to ease off if anything felt loose, as in opening my arms to spread a bedsheet or doing some acrobatic moves under those sheets. Stay still, tighten up and keep bones where they belong.

So, I have friends, mostly swimmers and including teammate Joel, who have had one or two of those operations. A lot of pain, permanently limited lateral motion and a long recovery (and some ugly scars) are included. The chest expander and hundreds of hours, maybe thousands of them, of exercise were a better deal.

So in this time of passionate concern of health care, are there any lessons from such anecdotes? I would think they might include:

• It can be well worth standing up for yourself with any arrogant doctors, as the surgeon who evaluated me. He could well have badgered me into stifling my certainty and not getting apt treatment.
• Pressing for viable alternatives may be as important as the proverbial second opinion. Everyone involved just knew that drastic reconstructive surgery was the only solution. Yet that turned out to be very wrong in this case.

There was a time when I trusted doctors implicitly. Of course that was the same period when I truly bought into the magic of transubstantiation. I was a kid.

As an adult moving to different cities and seeking physicians for preventative and curative reasons, I learned differently. I have also learned a hard lesson for a fairly introverted person. It’s tough, but you have to be your own advocate if you expect reasonable medical care.

Tags: massmarrier, NYC, health care, doctors, surgery

Pig Pile on Da Mare

Sorry, but I can't help it. There's lots of commentary on last night's Boston mayoral debate. Check UniversalHub for citizen/blogger comments, the Globe for lots of debate and analysis (plus three op-ed mini-columns straining to declare each challenger the winner — here, here and here.), and the Herald for analysis pretending to be straight news.

Overall, I found agreement with Richard Weir at the Herald. The challengers relentlessly attacked the mayor, to blunted effect.

Note to WBZ: Unfortunately, you are still too 20th Century.You should make the whole debate, plus clips of each question available on demand on your site. Uncool. And now a follow-up, BZ has posted vids on their 38 site. They make you look and work for it, but its there. In addition to hiding the important, they don't allow embedding.

Excelsior	J'accuse!	I Know Better	Systemic
Tom Menino	Kevin McCrea	Michael Flaherty	Sam Yoon

As usual, I wasn't going to comment on this overly anticipated debate, but I can't help myself. I have little bits to add.

It is neither melodramatic nor an oversimplification to say a challenger needed a knockout yesterday to advance beyond the primary. With only one more debate among the four contenders on the way, voters need compelling proof they should take a chance on a replacement.

Granted, one of them will get a shot at Menino in the November general election after this month's primary. That realistically means a whole new one-on-one race. Yet, the challengers have been remarkably consistent in message and the one standing for the general is likely to remain so.

For more trivial and shallower comments, consider appearance. You know many voters factor that in. Left to right facing the audience:

• Flaherty looked dazed from the start, like he was roused from a nap on the commuter rail. He seems to have trimmed down a bit in the campaign and looks healthy, but he didn't jump in with answers, more straggled. Next debate, he needs to come in showing he's decisive.
• McCrea shows he's a self-made man. He stood with a Larry-Craig-ish wide stance, more like cowboy. He could also use some serious hair styling and sideburns (this from a bald guy). He seemed rough and tumble in appearance and delivery.
• Menino managed to pull off wearing a flesh-colored (for some people) tie with his tan. He actually won the Healthy Glow award of the evening, even though he seems to continue to put on the pounds. (I do have to get him to ride bikes with me regularly.) He stayed calm in the sound of non-stop accusations from the other candidates.
• Yoon looks more pointed than ever, more like a fox than a person. That's not necessarily bad, as his message is sharp in the other sense. He was waving his fingers for attention to the moderator constantly and seemed the most competent of the four.

One of my Left Ahead! co-hosts, Ryan Adams, disagrees with me on voter attentiveness to debates and campaigning. We had the four on our podcast (Yoon, Flaherty, McCrea, and Menino). We also talked on several shows about what influenced voters in the mayoral and City Council contests. I contend that most people don't get newspapers and pay only a little attention to the fluff on radio and TV. Few even watch such heavily promoted events as last night's debate. Ryan trusts and respects the average voter more and thinks such displays are huge.

Either way, I don't think many brains and hearts point to different candidates this morning.

Another of my contentions has long been that Yoon is the smartest person in the race and likely in City Hall. Yet, as one city councilor told me, that doesn't necessarily translate into political savvy.

Flaherty is the little bit smarmy and very charming old-style pol. He surely could play the mayor role as well as the incumbent. That's important in gaining trust and votes.

McCrea is prickly and likely shocks many voters with his serious and specific calls for reform. He's the revolutionary candidate and may leave the biggest footprint in this race. His charges of incompetence, dishonesty and corruption have gotten a much wider coverage than when he presented them at committee meetings and public hearings over the years. Many voters and officials will want them addressed after the election. It is very unlikely that he will win the office, but he has the greatest chance of changing our government.

Yoon is hopelessly wonky. My wife likes what he says as well, but she was distressed to hear him using i.e. and antithetical in his arguments (losing many average voters). Likewise, he called for studies of this or that rather than coming to the debate with enough claims and specific proposals to solve existing problems. Government by research is what is done behind the scenes, but it is not the stuff of policy magic in a stump speech.

Menino disappointed, but only a little. He digressed into talking points, many not germane to the questions at hand. He just had to bring up this recognition of the city (of him) by this or that group to prove all was well, even swell. His handlers need to prepare him with more focused and meaningful statistics and evidence. He can deliver them and handles index cards far better than most pols.

Overall, we did see the strength of each candidate. I didn't sense that anyone hobbled Da Mare.

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Tags: massmarrier, Massachusetts, Boston, Menino, Sam Yoon, McCrea, debate, mayor, Flaherty

Health Care, How Care: Part 1

With our governor just subject to scalpel (and drill and hammer), I shall personalize the health care topic a bit here, with cross-posting at Harrumph!

We could note in passing that this is not a very scientific presentation, much open to the criticism of bloggers as opiners without checkable facts. Yet, blending facts with illustrations from experience is pretty much what you get from a visit to your typical primary-care physician or even specialist. More not that later and here.

Let's consider a few aspects of Gov. Deval Patrick's hip replacement. First and most obviously, he's covered. He has the excellent insurance from the state and he and wife Diane are quite wealthy on their own. They don't have concerns of getting the best care, paying for it or losing his job while he recovers.

Second, he has the great advantage of getting a mechanical repair. Like work from skilled cabinet makers or auto mechanics, a hip replacement is an eye-guided, hands-on job. Surgeons do a lot of these and the vendors have fine-tuned the gouge-out and pound-in joints for decades. They can see what they're doing and be sure all is well before sending him back to bed.

Contrast that with the far less precise visit to your family physician. Whether you come in for a checkup or with a particular complaint, you rely on the doc's art and even mood. There's a lot less medical science in an office visit than we think and hope.

Sure FPs (what we used to call GPs) read medical journals and attend training to keep up on studies and developments. Unfortunately, the findings often contradict previous and current studies. That understandably leads to doctors' faddishness, of waving a single study as now-we-know proof of how to proceed. Far too often as well, studies funded directly or indirectly by drug companies prove, kind of, that doctors should treat this or that symptom with drugs.

Only a few of us are demented in ways that we enjoy pain or seek being incapacitated. When docs say they'll alleviate our symptoms, it sounds sweet and, well, necessary.

On the other hand, I have a base contention that this illustrates a fundamental failing of U.S. health care. If rather than treating symptoms with drugs our docs analyzed, diagnosed and cured underlying causes of patients' problems, we would be much healthier, I hold.

Many doctors and surely all pharmaceutical giants would quickly and loudly squeal that there is no scientific evidence of a causal relationship between treating symptoms with drugs first or exclusively and our pathetic national longevity. (We're like 17th on the list of long-living nations.) Pardon my snickers as I note that drug-company funded research does not study outcomes associated with drug-for-symptoms v. underlying-cause treatments. The best outcome for patient has not been on the table.

Every medical college and research university should have such a study in the works. This goes to the core of our national health as well as our medical practice and procedure. More on this in future posts.

Today, I'll tell you about my hip operation. There are stories about my shoulder repair, testicular agony and leg surgery pending. Each contains lessons of health care.

Over at Left Ahead!, we've been asking for our promised podcast with Gov. Patrick. Former chief of staff Doug Rubin was setting this up before he went to the re-elect campaign. Three different staffers since say it's in the works. However, the subtext included a personal health question — is he a big consumer of diet sodas?

Thus, you can open the lid to the box of my own hip-surgery tale. Rather, peek at how and why I ended up not getting both hips replaced a decade ago.

Our governor had long-term hip pain. His doctors attributed that to a combination of an auto accident and arthritis, reasonable factors that may well account for his troubles.

In my case, various FPs and orthopedic surgeons likewise had good explanations of why I was crippled. They also projected numerous x-ray and CAT views before me that showed plain striations on my hip-socket balls. They had me heading for a double hip replacement.

I don't get emotionally invested in pain. I am well aware of it and dislike it, but I can go about my business without whining and without drugs. I headed for the doctors and endured the tests because I couldn't walk. My hips hurt to the point that I needed a walking staff to make it the 20 feet from bed to toilet.

Noting my personal history, the various doctors had a pretty good idea that it was arthritis. I was about the age Patrick is now, early 50s. That's typical for the onset of symptoms. More to the point, I had been an athlete. As a team swimmer, I figure I had done well over a million whip kicks in practice and competition. Plus, I was a regular cyclist as an adult. My hips had taken their share of abuse.

Sure enough, the internal images showed what the surgeons predicted. Their solution was new hip joints. Ta da.

At a very different corporal locale, I had very different symptoms. For example, when I'd shower and close my eyes, I saw an intense light show. That concerned me more. I had had a gruesome injury at 19 when I was hit as a pedestrian and thrown head-first through a windshield. Then recently, I got a strong concussion when an inattentive driver broadsided me on my cycle as she turned and floored her car without looking.

So, I was a mess top and bottom. My brain might be imploding and I couldn't walk right or without agony.
Complicating this was that I still had my tonsils, or put another way, I had never had surgery of any type and didn't want any.

Yet, I had physical, visual, quasi-scientific proof that arthritis crippled me. The fix was plain and inevitable and the surgeons were positive of cause and cure.

Well, I never had the replacement surgery. I was cured without cutting. It was not through prayers to a saint or other such miracle.

Instead a friend pointed me to what sounded like a serious crackpot, one with the unlikely name of Betty Martini. Someone with my last name of Ball, surely the most risible in the language, should never goof on another's name, but really, Betty Martini?

She is a relentless foe of aspartame, a.k.a. by brand name NutraSweet®. Our FDA approves the sweetener and the company carrying the name cites many studies alleging its safety. However, at her Mission Possible group, Martini piles on studies, news and personal reports that say otherwise. She led me to try my own personal (universe of one) quasi-scientific study.

Relevant details in my instance included:

• History of head injuries.
• Two key symptoms, according to Martini's work, of aspartame reactions —hip pain and brain electrical anomalies.
• Heavy use of aspartame (one to two two-liter bottles a day, in lieu of water or juice).

The short of it is that after years of increasing hip pain, I was free of even discomfort within three weeks of stopping the Diet Pepsi. Likewise, the light shows totally disappeared after more than a year of daily occurrence.

Being hardheaded, masochistic or scientific, depending on how you look at it, I had to know. I reintroduced aspartame by my liquid of choice three times. I had the same effects each time. Within two days, the hip pain and flashes returned and then went away a few days after stopping. That's not pure science, but I remain convinced.

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A mess top and bottom

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I confess now as then, I was highly skeptical of Martini's assertions. Not only did she seem New Age and even crackpot, but real surgeons had waved x-rays and aired solid reasoning at me. I had to prove or disprove this in my own little and very personal experiments.

I won't debate the NutraSweet folk or any aspartame vendor. That's Martini's business. It's quite likely that sensitivity to the substance varies considerably and just as likely from my perspective that many have symptoms they attribute to other causes. I certainly understand why the vendors pretend their chemical limo is very safe to ride every day everywhere.

For my part, I do tell people my story. Non-surgical, non-drug solutions to chronic pain and other symptoms seem to intrigue us all.

Moreover, I have no way of knowing whether Gov. Patrick fit my mold at all in this. He and I both had doctors positive that our hip pain required metal replacing bone. Mine were wrong, but his may well have been right.

In my deepest heart, I would like to return to my childhood belief that doctors truly know causes and cures. Alas, I have had too many experiences contradicting that. I'll share a few more in future parts and link to them here as they post.

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Tags: massmarrier, Massachusetts, Deval Patrick, health care, doctors, aspartame, Betty+Martini, surgery

Vermont Starts Same-Sex Marriages

A minute or two into this day, Vermont joined the four states with for-real same sex marriage. Maine has passed the law, but faces a ballot fight by the anti-gay/anti-SSM/anti-marriage equality sorts in a people's veto. So as of this morning, it's Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire and Iowa.

Up in South Burlington, Cori Giroux and Claire Williams wed first in Vermont. The solemnization honor fell to Beth Robinson, board chair of the Vermont Freedom to Marry Task Force.

So, no harm and only happiness ensued.

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Tags: massmarrier, Vermont, same sex marriage, marriage equality

Ted's Free Period

The grand Kennedy died. As I heard the due honors, I suddenly wondered how long.

Which of the hostile and asocial sorts will be first, second, third...to slam Ted? Spinning the Axis of Asses are likely to be FoxNews, Limbaugh, Coulter and such locals as Hub Politics and Red Mass Group.

Surprisingly, they were not immediate on slamming the Senator. There was a hint and warning at Malkin's site:

There is a time and place for political analysis and criticism. Not now.

Yes, there will be a nauseating excess of MSM hagiographies and lionizations — and crass calls to pass the health care takeover to memorialize his death.

That’s no excuse to demonstrate the same lack of restraint in the other direction. Not now.

She is as tasteless and dishonest and dishonorable as any. So, she'll likely wait a day or two, but certainly not until he's buried before piling on the lies and contorted extrapolations.

We know it will come from the many wingers. So, let's plan on dismissing those puerile attacks like so many flies at the picnic.

Instead, let's keep in the fore that Ted could have taken many easy ways out. He was born wealthy and connected. He could have gone corporate or foundation and cruised in comfort. Having been elected U.S. Senator, he might have been one of the many who ferried the bacon from D.C. to MA, earning adoration and re-election for cash.

This Ted though plugged away for the hard stuff, big ideas that his assassinated brothers sought and much more. He did the progressive thing, going for the underlying problems and long-term solutions. To his last day, he was focused and relentless on those goals.

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Tags: massmarrier, Ted Kennedy, Massachusetts

Bucks for Love and Equality

Appealing shamelessly to the worst in Americans, the bad guys are pouring money and bodies into sparse Maine. This is the time for those who believe in civil rights and in equality to break out the checkbook or plastic.

This is vitally important.

The anti-gay, anti-same-sex marriage professionals and hangers on are vicious but not necessarily stupid. Following the overturn of SSM in California, they acknowledge that Maine's legislated marriage equality has great symbolic value. By bringing in their Hessians and carpetbaggers, funded with out-of-state and out-of-region corporate lobbying, they gamble they can turn back equal rights there in the pending people's veto.

Maine's voters are decidedly toys of the National Organization for Marriage, the various misnamed marriage family groups (which want to limit marriages and families through discrimination), and professional lobbyists. The state has only a little over a million people and apparently NOM figures it can cheaply buy the votes of the confused and dull-witted with disinformation in advertising.

Maybe they can. They have a pretty good chance if we don't all chip in a little now and again in September or October. Sooner is better.

I like to pretend that I can maintain some distance from subjects I cover. I try not to donate to specific local candidates. I have only agreed to put on one lawn sign and fortunately the candidate hasn't delivered anything yet to take me up on it.

Maine is different and it is important. Equality Maine's Vote No on 1 needs volunteers. If you're not close enough or don't have a day or more, do as I do and send some money. They face high tides of anti-gay funding. The least we can do is give them an equal shot at keeping equal rights.

The bad guys clearly hate that a small and largely rural state (as in not Massachusetts) voted equal rights by law to homosexual couples. That's yet more proof that it's not some ultra-liberal trick. They'll do whatever they can to hinder and harm gay couples. We can help send 'em home in defeat.

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Tags: massmarrier, same sex marriage, Maine, People' Veto, NOM, Equality Maine

Calming Boston Streets Again

We at Left Ahead! have a special and extra show this week on Thursday, August 20th, at 10 a.m. The new executive director of the Boston TenPoint Coalition joins us.

Rev. Jeffrey Brown has the ambitious goal of leading the effort to minimize urban violence in Boston, mostly the youth-on-youth variety. It was over a decade ago that the Coalition led the successful effort that became the Boston Miracle.

He'll tell us what's changed on the streets and in the larger communities and how his group will address the challenge.

You can listen live here Thursday at 10 a.m. You can check that URL later or go to Left Ahead to listen to or download the show.

Death to DOMA Says Obama

Finally, we impatient and self-righteous sorts can ease a bit. Speaking through a U.S. Justice Department filing today, the allegedly civil-rights oriented President made it clear that DOMA (the federal Defense of Marriage Act) must go.

A filing in U.S. District Court in California, Smelt v. U.S., continues to ask for dismissal of a suit by a gay couple wanting to overturn DOMA. Yet, as the Washington Post notes, "the filing itself made clear that the administration 'oes not support DOMA as a matter of policy, believes that it is discriminatory, and supports its repeal.'"

That's kind of a mealy mouthed way to get at it. Then again, Obama is a lawyer.

The AP filed a detailed report on the current developments. The separate statement is available at Pam's House Blend. Obama's phrasing was refreshingly unequivocal for him:

Today, the Department of Justice has filed a response to a legal challenge to the Defense of Marriage Act, as it traditionally does when acts of Congress are challenged. This brief makes clear, however, that my Administration believes that the Act is discriminatory and should be repealed by Congress. I have long held that DOMA prevents LGBT couples from being granted equal rights and benefits. While we work with Congress to repeal DOMA, my Administration will continue to examine and implement measures that will help extend rights and benefits to LGBT couples under existing law.

It's about time, past time really. May this toll the first death knoll on Bill Clinton's biggest legislative blunder.

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Tags: massmarrier, gay rights, civil rights, Obama, DOMA, same-sex marriage