Governor Kathleen Sebelius to Be Named Secretary of Health and Human Services.

President Obama has chosen Kathleen Sebelius, Governor of Kansas, for Secretary of Health and Human Services.

I am deeply glad the President has chosen Governor Sebelius to be in his cabinet.  (Even while it's a blow for Kansas, who needs a good leader right now more than ever, given the state's current economic woes, and the gaggle of Republicans hanging about in the state legislature who continue to insist the children of Kansas never hear about the miracle of science, etc.)

I'll allow one of my fellow MOMocrats to better unpack the reasons why the Governor is a super-savvy pick for the role.  I merely wanted to mark the moment, because she is, after all, an honorary MOMocrat, as revealed to MOMocrats Glennia and Sarah, when they had the opportunity to meet and speak with her last year.

Congratulations, Governor Sebelius.  We here at the MOMocrats are fiercely proud of your work as a public servant, and look forward to the good you'll do as a member of our new president's cabinet.

* Photo from MOmocrats Glennia Campbell and Sarah Granger

Not My Grandmother's Christianity

The following is a guest post by occasional MOMocrat contributor Amy Corron Power, who also blogs at Another Wine Blog.

I have spent the better part of my life trying not to feel anything. It wasn't because I had a horrible childhood – I didn't. It wasn't because bad things happened to me – they did, but I'd been perfecting the fine art of “not feeling” long before that. Perhaps it was because the family motto was “Never Bring Undue Attention to Yourself.” Or it might have been that there were too many other people emoting in my house while I was growing up – and the only emotion not being used was anger.

So I did that at home – anger. But not the throw-a-fit kind of anger. Not the screaming and yelling kind of anger. But the kind you stuff deep down inside. The kind that gives you migraines. The kind that makes you eat too much. The kind that makes you stick needles and pins through your skin. The kind that makes you put yourself in dangerous situations and then believe you either caused it, or deserved it when bad things happened. Bad things like rape. Domestic violence. Living with a raging alcoholic who liked to leave and come back and then leave again.

The kind that makes you believe the song “Jesus Loves Me” does not apply to you. Oh yes, Jesus does loves some people – just not “you,” that is just not me.

I left the circus of anger and self-doubt. My life is no longer the Roller Coaster of Hell perpetuated by the Carousel of Bad Relationships. I have a loving husband, a pretty decent outlook on life, and I no longer tolerate any sort of abuse. And most of the time, I believe Jesus loves me.

What makes me furious, now, is that after it took me years of therapy to get past that feeling of unworthiness, of nothingness, of feeling that I didn't deserve love -- not the love of a man, not the love of friends – not the love of God – that a group of self-loathing, judgmental, self-proclaimed ultra-right wing conservatives have made me suspect anyone who advertises themselves as a Christian.

The Ironic Behavior By the Super-Wealthy: Delicious.

Gonna need an extra-large spork to handle the latest heft of delectable irony being ladled out by the extra-rich (extra + extra = yum-o!).  (Discovered on TPMMuckraker)

The, uh, scoop, via NYT:

UBS was sued on Tuesday in a Swiss federal court by wealthy American clients seeking to prevent the disclosure of their identities as part of a tax-evasion investigation by the United States Justice Department.

The lawsuit accuses UBS and Switzerland’s financial regulator, the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority, or Finma, of violating Swiss bank secrecy laws and of conducting what Swiss law considers illegal activities with foreign authorities. It also named Peter Kurer, the chairman of UBS, and Eugen Haltiner, the chairman of Finma, as defendants.

The suit, filed by a lawyer in Zurich, Andreas Rued, on behalf of nearly a dozen American clients, underscores the growing clash between Swiss banking secrecy laws and those of the United States. Tax evasion is not considered a crime in Switzerland. Disclosing client names under Swiss law is a criminal offense and can expose bank executives and officers to fines, prison terms and other penalties.

Isn't it grand?  Rich people don't have to pay taxes because they have enough money to stash it in some super-secret vault that has given itself special, above-the-law privileges to avoid having to reveal whose money is stashed within.  And the rich people have enough money to sue THE LAW-MAKERS over having to potentially reveal their super-secret identities (gee, are they superheroes, only with a $ symbol instead of an S?), because they have alla that money.  Stashed away.  In the super-secret vault.  That they're not paying taxes on.  To cover the expenses/incomes of the law-making law-makers.  And the courts.  And the system THEY'RE RELYING ON TO KEEP COVERING UP THEIR SUPER-SECRET IDENTITIES.

I wonder if irony tastes good on ice cream.  It's certainly quite intoxicating on its own.

Mother's Day Every Day: The White Ribbon Alliance

Photo: Mother's Day Every Day campaign launch. From left: WRA's Susan McCue, Mary Matalin, Rep. Betty McCollum, Rep. Lois Capps, CARE President Dr. Helene Gayle, WRA President Theresa Shaver, Rep. Doris Matsui, Rep. Mary Jo Kilroy, CARE's JoDee Winterhoff, Ambassador Mark Dybul.

Every minute, another woman dies in childbirth. That's over 500,000 women a year. Mothers. Daughters. Sisters. Wives. Teachers. Farmers. Community builders. In developing nations, pregnancy and childbirth are leading causes of disability and death.

When a woman in a developing country dies in childbirth, all of her children under the age of 10, not just her newborn infant, become 3 to 10 times more likely to die within two years.

Most of the women who die every day in childbirth could be saved with simple, low-cost interventions that would pay for themselves long term by decreasing the need for state aid to motherless children and increasing the economic productivity of developing communities. Just the presence at delivery of a trained childbirth assistant, like a midwife or a nurse, equipped with the most basic cleaning and medical supplies, can mean the difference between life and death for a woman giving birth. Even when complications arise and emergency care is needed, a single tetanus shot, a low-cost dose of antibiotics, or one blood transfusion could be all that is needed to save a new mother's life.

Yet, because of a lack of public awareness about both the magnitude of the problem and the simplicity of the solutions, institutionalized discrimination against women, and poorly managed, inefficient government use of health care funds in developing countries, women around the world continue to die in pregnancy and childbirth at an alarming rate.

The White Ribbon Alliance for Safe Motherhood, a grassroots coalition of individual volunteers and charitable organizations with chapters around the globe, is working to save those women, by raising worldwide public awareness about maternal mortality, improving understanding of ways to prevent injury and death in childbirth in developing communities, and encouraging its members to pressure their own governments to take simple, inexpensive steps to improve women's access to basic health care. Today, WRA and CARE are launching a new campaign called Mother's Day Every Day. 

Rachel Maddow's Take on Bobby Jindal's NSOTU Response

You must watch Rachel Maddow's take on Bobby Jindal's response to the Non-State of the Union speech for the Republican Party.  Immediately afterwards she was actually rendered speechless.  Then she pulled it together for this:

Can I just say, "ditto"?

Stephanie also mocks Republicans at Lawyer Mama.

Is Health Care Reform Possible?

On Tuesday, President Obama released his overview of the FY2010 budget. The real budget, complete with 8 point font that makes us wonks go blind will be out in April. This coming Monday, he’s addressing lawmakers and others regarding the need for health care reform. All in all, an initial heavy focus on health, especially if one considers the early legislative victory that was SCHIP reauthorization. Working inside the beltway means I attend a number of health care conferences, roundtables, and news events. Just before Obama’s speech, I went to a morning session with a Senate-side staffer and that same afternoon I went to the Commonwealth Fund’s release of their brand-spankin’-new report on High Performance Health Care (executive summary here for those without time or inclination to read all 122 pages.)

By the end of the day, I felt like I had whiplash.

The MOMocrats on PVOW Livechat

The MOMocrats participated in a Cover it Live chat hosted by The Political Voices of Women at Writes Like She Talks to discuss President Barack Obama's speech to Congress. If you'd like to read what we said about the (Not) State of the Union, go here.

In DTV Transition, Some Rural Areas Could Be Cut Out of the Picture

Congress recently approved postponing the nationwide DTV transition date, the day on which all major broadcast television stations must cease analog transmission and begin broadcasting in digital signals, from February 17th, 2009 to June 12th, 2009.

The deadline extension was approved in part because a government fund set up to subsidize the purchase of digital converter boxes for people who could not afford to buy new DTV-compatible television sets ran out of money several weeks before the deadline, forcing consumers who had applied for government assistance coupons onto a waiting list. The FCC also supported a delay after discovering in the weeks prior to the originally scheduled switch that their phone banks were insufficiently staffed to cover a deluge of calls from concerned citizens who had managed to purchase converter boxes but needed instructions on how to connect converter boxes to their TVs.

The delay should help many broadcast television watchers who weren't able to purchase a digital converter box before the original February deadline get their analog TVs connected to a converter before the switch; the federal government expects to make more coupons available during the delay, and many local charity groups are stepping in to help elderly and low-income people in their area purchase and connect digital converters.

But even if every analog television watcher in America buys and connects a converter box or purchases a new DTV television set before the deadline, some people in rural areas might still see their TVs go dark on June 12th.

My Hollywood Family- The Shocking Truth

I had a very stark reminder tonight about how different we all are.

As my husband and I celebrated the addition of another Academy Award to his resume, I remarked online how nice it was to hear so many of the acceptance speeches include thanks to wives and kids.

I'm a wife. I have kids. I notice these things.

Of course the internet being what it is, it didn't take long before a very snarky comment was thrown my way by a conservative- "Yeah, they are such role models for family values."

And I suddenly remembered what I had clearly blacked out since November 4th:

Many people in this country don't believe my family has values. They can't comprehend my family is "good" or "virtuous." It's incomprehensible to them that we are decent Americans.

Econ 101: Crisis of Credit

For those readers out there who are still unsure about how housing, investment banks, your 401(k) and the economy are all tied together, this is a wonderful tutorial I found today at NPR's Planet Money. 

The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

Kady also blogs at Wonkess.