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Ramblings From the Ragged Crumbling Edge Of The Reality-Based Community

Friday, July 10, 2009

A Friendly Piece Of Advice 

...for those, such as Politico writer Josh Gerstein and anyone who wants to take his concerns that he outlines in his insidious little story about the impact that Sonya Sotomayor's Type 1 diabetes may have on her ability to serve as an Associate Justice on the SCOTUS, I have one friendly little piece of advice:

Don't go there.

No; seriously. Do not travel down this trail. Those people who have been living with Type 1 diabetes don't want to hear it and those of us who have spent years - 8 years in my case - or face years to come trying to convince their children who have this form of diabetes that they can lead full, meaningful lives absolutely, positively DO NOT WANT TO HEAR IT...

Type 1 (frequently called "juvenile" because of the usual time of onset) diabetes is an autoimmune disease that is poorly understood by the population at large because it is not all that common. Even now, here at the end of the first decade of the 21st Century, I have people saying about my diabetic second-born "oh, that poor dear; he can't eat anything with sugar, can he?". There is no particular understanding that managing Type 1 diabetes is mostly - as I have written many time in the past - a math exercise involving the balancing of grams of carbohydrate intake vs. the units of insulin necessary to account for metabolizing those carb's (with the amount of exercise being a bit of a wild card character that needs to be factored in). Because of that lack of understanding, there is a subsequent lack of understanding of what is actually meant by Sotomayor's efforts to exert tight control over her blood sugar...

Now for the technical part:

The normal range of blood sugars that most doctors wants to see for an adult Type 1 diabetic is around 80 to 120 milligrams per deciliter, which most closely approximates the normal blood sugar values for the rest of us whose pancreatic function hasn't fled to the hills. The A1c value (a measure of how much glucose is sticking to red blood cells) that those doctors - including my second-born's endocrinologist - are looking for is somewhere between 6 and 7.5, with 7 being a "good" number and anything between 6 and 7 being an excellent number with respect to long-term health prospects. The long term health issue here is that 'sticky' red blood cells burdened with a load of extra glucose cause damage to the smallest capillary blood vessels in the body, resulting in circulatory failure in the extremities (particularly the feet and legs), the eyes, and internal organs like the kidneys. But let us get back to the point of all of this...

This Politico article is, to my eyes as the parent of a Type 1 diabetic rather than as a Dirty Fricking Hippy liberal, just another piece of work intended to create a space within which discrimination against an otherwise fully functional American citizen can be made acceptable. Sotomayor isn't about to be vetted for a position as the captain of a passenger airliner or a ship; she is not asking to become an air traffic controller or a member of a Marine rifle platoon. She has not been nominated for any position that has some sort of erratic and unpredictable physical demand that would result in her efforts to tightly control her blood sugar putting her at physical risk. She has been nominated for a position that - from the standpoint of physical demand and management of her diabetes - looks a whole lot like the jobs she has held over the last seventeen years, never mind those other years of work in NYC or in private practice...

There's a simple bottom line to understand here; in a few small, dark, fetid corners of the grim world where the remnant survivors of the failure of conservative governance live, a new angle on an old form of discrimination is being pushed quietly onto the table. What Gerstein's piece tries to suggest in a nudging way without coming right out and saying it is that Sonya Sotomayor is not qualified to be a Supreme Court Justice because she is a Type 1 diabetic. What this posited argument is saying is that, along with not being a True-Blue Caucasian, she is somehow fatally flawed because her pancreas don't produce insulin to regulate her blood sugar in the same way you and I expect. What this posited argument is saying is that all those years of effort by those of us who are the parents of diabetic children to convince them that their lives can still be productive and meaningful have been essentially a lie and and a waste of time, because in the strange shadowy world of the wingnut mindset we are the creators of lesser beings who do not deserve to have a shot at any sort of life that matters...

The ultimate harm that we parents of children who are juvenile diabetics have fought for longer than wingnut idiots like Josh Gerstein have been around has been centered on the whole question of what our children can be when they grow up. The fundamental failure of faux journalists like Gerstein to actually try to understand what Type 1 diabetes means as a lifestyle and the simply absurd suggestion fronted by Gerstein that her status as a diabetic might...maybe...wink wink nudge nudge...be a disqualifying factor to Sotomayor's nomination is the sort of dismissive and discriminatory attitude that turns otherwise placid people like me (no, seriously) into flaming activists. What is being suggested by Gerstein's piece is that the profoundly sedentary job of being a SCOTUS justice is somehow beyond the physical capabilities of a person who is a Type 1 diabetic. It apparently doesn't matter in the case of this particular attack that there isn't any evidence that she has suffered from a failure of performance owing to her diabetes as a Federal District judge or Circuit Court of Appeals Judge or NYC prosecutor or counsel in private practice...

This is grasping at any opportunity to carry out a wingnut hatchet job, pure and simple. Beyond that, it is purely offensive even beyond the otherwise usual offensive racism that has tinged Republican statements of objection to Sotomayor's nomination from the outset. And, because of the ham-handed way that conservatives are handling this part of Sotomayor's story, this is now personal for a whole lot of people...

People who write for Politico aren't bright enough to figure this all out, but members of the Senate of The United States had better be able to do so. Being a Type 1 diabetic is no more a disqualifying factor for service in the judiciary than being a Type 2 diabetic is for serving in either the judiciary, legislative, or executive branches. In fact, being a Type 1 diabetic shouldn't be a disqualifying factor for any judicial nomination in any case, and it hasn't been on two separate occasions in Sotomayor's case, but it is now the case that people with the journalistic ethics of hyenas and the human compassion of mealworms are weighing in on the subject...

One more time, let me suggest a bit of friendly advice:

Just don't go there. As the parent of a Type 1 diabetic, I can assure that you will not like how the day turns out...
Posted by: Jack K. / 6:55 PM 0 comments

Thursday, July 09, 2009

Oh, To Be A United States Senator For A Day...Or Two 

...I confess that there aren't very many days when the thought "how GREAT would it be to be a US Senator" crosses my mind. Generally it seems like a job that, by and large, sucks if you have any interest in maintaining those moral scruples that your parents and teachers and mentors worked so hard to drill bone-deep into your psyche. It doesn't seem like sleep would come easy most any night if a person really wanted to cling to those values and at the same time operate in that strange D.C. world where it's necessary - on a daily basis - to travel down roads to places that used car salesmen would refuse to visit at gunpoint. But there are moments - and this is shaping up to be one of them - where I almost wish there was a ticket booth available to by a ticket for that ride for just a couple of days...

Think of it: some guy, one who has no particular legal experience and whose only claim to fame is being the primary plaintiff name in a lawsuit that lost at both the District and Appellate federal court levels - on the basis of existing case law - and only finally won at the SCOTUS level because of a bare majority opinion that flings stare decisis to the winds, is going to belly up to the witness table in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee to share his thoughts on why Sonia Sotomayor is unfit to be given a life-time appointment to the country's high court. More to the point, this witness - who is your go-to guy when it comes to saving lives and property but probably not the person you would turn to for legal advice - is apparently going to attempt to explain why Sotomayor is unfit to replace the retiring SCOTUS Associate Justice who arrived at the same conclusion that she did...

Oh, the questions I could ask of Mr. Ricci as he settles in for his "Joe the Plumber" moment - and make no mistake about that part; this is the same sort of effort to "put a human face" on the horrors of a Sotomayor SCOTUS appointment that Republican strategists have deluded themselves into thinking were productive with the original version last fall. Those questions rattling around in my "Senator For A Day" dream just come tumbling out, mostly because of the cheap political theater that Senate Republicans want to trot out onto the national stage:

"What, exactly, are your views, Mr. Ricci, on Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act?"

"What examples of past reverse descrimination in the New Haven fire department do you have, Mr. Ricci?"

"How do you feel about Griggs v. Duke Power Company (401 U.S. 424 (1971)) in general, Mr. Ricci?"

"What history do you have, Mr. Ricci, of developing race-neutral tests for promotion to Fire Captain and Lieutenant, and how does that inform your opinion that the decision of the three-judge panel of the Second District Court of Appeals was flawed?"

"And, Mr. Ricci, how does any such expertise square with the fact that black employees are so profoundly underrepresented in leadership positions in the New Haven Fire Department compared to their percentage in the general population and lower ranks of Department employees?"

Like I said, this is all "Joe the Plumber" stuff that Republicans are trying to peddle, and the sense of outrage they are trying to crank up will sell on the usual street corners, but not in a lot of places out there in the real world. It finally reduces the judicial confirmation process to a cheap, meaningless sideshow instead of a moment of great import - both in the near term and as part of the long view of American history - and guarantees that nothing less than a comet strike on the North American continent will ever get us back to some sort of balanced evaluation of judicial nominees in whatever cave the huddled survivors pick to be the place where the ultimate rebuilding starts. It does, however, look like a fun game to play if you have an E ticket for a seat on the dais of Senatorial Power, and it would be great to have that ticket for a day...
Posted by: Jack K. / 8:08 PM 0 comments

Wednesday, July 08, 2009

Can I Come Work At Your Place? 

...it is almost impossible to describe how unhappy this sort of news makes your average public servant feel. That sad, sinking feeling that civil servants feel at the revelation of this bit of information has nothing whatsoever to do with possible failures to properly fight the evil Islamofascist forces that are arrayed against us or the risks that these security failures could represent to our thoroughly American way of life...

No; no, that isn't the issue. The issue that so severely affects federal civil service employees as a result of this GAO report can be boiled down to the simplest of questions: Why the Hell do they have to go through all the daily nonsense of the security charade required to simply get to their desks every day when there is a reasonable chance that any old meth-addled "patriot" could walk through the door and step into the men's room to mix up an explosive device large enough to bring the building down around their ears?

This is little more than another example of how the failure of the last administration is a "gift" that keeps on giving. The efforts of Bushco to protect any and all of us from the Eveeel Terrasts was never much more than lip service and - as in the case of this disturbing story - we are probably not through finding out just how badly we were served by those clowns when it came all the way down to actually keeping us safe...

In the meantime, I just might be interested in moving into any vacant desks you might have around your office...as long as it isn't in a Federal facility. I have my own pencils, pens, paper, and laptop, if that helps, and I can be so quiet you won't even know I'm around. Think of me as being "Free To A Good Home"...
Posted by: Jack K. / 8:50 PM 0 comments

Monday, July 06, 2009

How To Get Written Out Of Teh Will, NOT Michael Jackson Edition 

...if you really...no, really want to make sure that you don't have to deal with all those guilt issues resulting from missing Thanksgiving Day dinner at Grandma's house, this is probably the way to go...

If, on the other hand, you had a covetous eye on Grandma's antique china hutch for that sad day when it comes time to divvy up her mortal belongings, or - at least in my nuclear family - don't want to find yourself needing to sign up for a Peace Corps tour in a remote tribal village in Benin in order to get away from some really angry parents, siblings, and other members of your extended family, you might want to find another way of filling up those moments of extreme listless boredom...
Posted by: Jack K. / 9:13 PM 0 comments

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