So, here’s the giveaway breakdown:

Day 4 (Friday): My Von Zipper sunglasses to Maggie
Day 5 (Saturday): A free Ruthie Pearl bag to one of my top customers at the market!
Day 6 (Sunday): I failed. I didn’t give anything away on Sunday.
Day 7 (Monday): Does the $20 I gave to the tow-truck driver as a tip count?

See? I told you I’d been bad.

Speaking of the tow-truck driver…I must tell you this story. The nicest man came and picked Scott and me up after our rock climbing session this afternoon. He was explaining to us on the way to the shop that he used to work 80-90 hours a week at a gas station for $15,000/year. He saying that now he has a slightly better deal because he is scheduled 60 hours a week (sometimes working 80-90) for a tow-truck company. He now makes $20,000/year. That is $6.50/hour. How is it possible to live off of that??! For what it’s worth, it made me thankful for the job I have–even if it drives me absolutely nuts some most of the time.

I will try to resume the giving project tomorrow.

PS: Jill, are you out there? I need your contact info to send you the Arc’teryx jacket! If not, I’ll put it back on the market.

PPS: I refreshed the Ruthie Pearl blog over the weekend, and I’m planning to shift all my focus to that moving forward. So, if you’re sick of my political/religious rants and would rather just enjoy some nice photos, tutorials and creative adventures, check it out! I find that I’m much happier if I have one positive thing to focus on…all my blogs in the past have mostly been fly-by-night attempts to get my voice heard (AKA: negative energy). Ruthie Pearl is a much healthier endeavor.

Today’s giveaway item is a real steal: the Arc’teryx Delta SV zip fleece jacket.

You can read more about it here.

It’s hardly been worn at all, as it’s a tad bit too tight for me. The jacket is a size small, and if you know Arc’teryx sizing, you know it has a pretty “athletic” cut (read: tiny). So this small is more of an extra-small, or, if you’re a small and like your things to fit snugly, this will work for you. It fits me, but I like a little more room to breathe. For reference, I am 5’6″ and 120 pounds with a small-average bust size…about a size 4.

To give my blog readers who don’t Twitter a fair chance, the first one to comment on this post and say “I’ll take it!” gets the goods.

Today’s giveaway came from just such an experience. I was recently an exhibitor at the Craft Lake City arts and crafts fair, and I received a goody bag with my booth. It was “full of awesome stuff” that I will never use, including a cute printed t-shirt from one of the local independent radio stations (it’s a size small in one of those American Apparel type brands, and we all know those fit NO ONE over the age of 3) and today’s giveaway.

These have been sitting in my closet for a few weeks, and I convinced myself I was going to make fabulous scarves and hats for myself and friends this winter.

Doubtful.

It’s a really nice set of Knifty Knitter rings complete with all the hooks to use them and a carrying bag. I brought these to work and was going to offer them on Twitter, but my coworker snatched them up! She has two little girls, ages 8 and 6, and they will get a lot of family craft time out of these! Enjoy!

So for the month of September (my 29th birthday month, no less), I’m going to give away one personal item each day. That’s right; no strings attached. I’m going to offer it on Twitter/my blog/Facebook, and the first person who asks for it will receive it. (I might ask for shipping on some items, but that is all.)

The items will range in price/size/amount of prior love received, but all will be given in good spirit.

SO, for today’s item, I offered a pair of ladies’, size 39.5, Jimmy Choo slingbacks. These were purchased in 2005 for much more than I could afford, and they’ve been duly loved. However, it’s time to say goodbye.

Dear Jimmy,

I purchased you in 2005 after finding out a contract I’d been trying to sell at my work had finally been approved. Even though I saw no immediate financial gain in that success, I, in my irrational thinking, believed that I deserved a pair of $495 shoes while making a mere $40K salary. I obsessed over you for…24….HOURS, and then put down the plastic. I still remember the lady who helped me pick you out. She told me how fabulous I looked and how wonderfully long and skinny my legs were. She explained how I deserved you and would always make more money (since I was becoming so successful in my career). I don’t blame her for convincing me to buy you; rather, I blame myself for allowing my compulsion to win. You were carefully selected out of a field of many Manolo Blahniks and Choos, and oh…you were so perfect. But alas, our time has come. I must move on. I’m sure there’s someone out there who’s better for you.

And…her name is @tuckerandswiss.

Congrats, girl! You were the first to say “I’ll take it!”

Anyway

People are unreasonable, and self-centered

Love them anyway.

If you do well, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.
Do well anyway.
If you are successful, you win false friends and true enemies.

Succeed anyway.

The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway.
Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.
Be honest and frank anyway.
What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.
Build anyway.
People who really need help may attack you if you help them.
Help anyway.
Give the world the best you got and you will get kicked in the teeth.

Give the best you got anyway .

Frank Luntz is a GOP strategist. His job is essentially to help the Republican party use the media to coerce/persuade/convince/etc. people to be on their side (a.k.a., public relations strategist, propagandist, strategist, etc.). He put out this instruction on how Republican leaders and politicians should go about “Stopping the Washington Takeover of Health Care.”

Luntz took polls done on the American people and crafted this memo to help his people to say EXACTLY WHAT YOU WANT TO HEAR and to push your buttons on the issues you fear the most. He says things like “Use this to your advantage” and one of my favorites:

They don’t want to hear that you’re opposed to government healthcare because it’s too expensive (any help from the government to lower costs will be embraced) or because it’s anti-competitive (they don’t know about or care about current limits to competition). But they are deathly afraid that a government
takeover will lower their quality of care – so they are extremely receptive to the anti-Washington approach. It’s not an economic issue. It’s a bureaucratic issue.

It’s public relations at its worst, frankly, and quite honestly…it disgusts me.

It reads like call center script manual — it’s an, “If they say this, then respond with this” type of thing. And the funny part? Since this memo came out, the words and phrases documented in his memo have skyrocketed in frequency by politicians as well as radio commentators such as Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Dave Ramsey, etc.

So in case you didn’t catch it before, here is the memo. Now THAT…THAT is scary stuff.

Further info:

Frank I. Luntz (born February 23, 1962) is an American conservative Republican political consultant and pollster.^[1] His most recent work has been with the Fox News Channel running focus groups after presidential debates. Luntz’s specialty is “testing language and finding words that will help his clients sell their product or turn public opinion on an issue or a candidate.”^[2] Luntz formed The Luntz Research Companies in 1992, and maintains an office in Alexandria, Virginia. (Wikipedia)

Propaganda is communication aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position. As opposed to impartially providing information, propaganda in its most basic sense, presents information primarily to influence an audience. Propaganda often presents facts selectively (thus lying by omission) to encourage a particular synthesis, or uses loaded messages to produce an emotional rather than rational response to the information presented. The desired result is a change of the attitude toward the subject in the target audience to further a political agenda. (Wikipedia)

The return of the viral email | Health Insurance Reform Reality Check

In addition, here are some of the misconceptions, as debunked by PolitiFact.com (original article here):

• Page 22: Mandates audits of all employers that self-insure! False: Section 113  of the bill requires the Health Choices commissioner to conduct a study to make sure health reform does not unintentionally create incentives for businesses to self-insure or create adverse selection in the risk pools of insured plans. There is no mandated audit.

• Page 29: Admission: your health care will be rationed! False: Section 122 outlines broad categories of benefits that must be included in an essential benefits package. It prohibits cost-sharing for preventive care and limits annual out-of-pocket spending to $5,000 for an individual and $10,000 for a family, indexed for inflation. It says nothing about rationing or limiting treatment.

• Page 30: A government committee will decide what treatments and benefits you get (and, unlike an insurer, there will be no appeals process) Barely True: Section 123 establishes a Health Benefits Advisory Committee that makes recommendations on what types of health insurance coverage will be defined as basic, enhanced or premium. The committee will be chaired by the surgeon general, with members appointed by the president, the comptroller general, and representatives of federal agencies. This committee makes recommendations on insurance regulations, so in that sense it does set standards for benefits. But it does not make decisions about treatments for individuals.

• Page 42: The “Health Choices Commissioner” will decide health benefits for you. You will have no choice. None. Pants on Fire!: Section 142 outlines the duties of the Health Choices commissioner, who is charged with regulating insurers. The commissioner should seek insurers to offer different types of insurance, including basic, enhanced and premium. Individuals will be able to choose among competing insurers who are regulated via the exchange.

• Page 50: All non-US citizens, illegal or not, will be provided with free health care services. Pants on Fire! Section 152 includes a generic nondiscrimination clause, which says insurers may not discriminate with regard to “personal characteristics extraneous to the provision of high quality health care or related services.” It says nothing about “non-US citizens” or immigrants, legal or otherwise. In fact, the legislation specifically states that undocumented aliens will not be eligible for credits to help them buy health insurance, in Section 246 on page 143.

• Page 58: Every person will be issued a National ID Healthcard. Barely True: Section 163 sets out goals for electronic health records. It says one goal should be real-time confirmation of which services a person qualifies for and how much they will have to pay. That could be achieved by machine-readable beneficiary cards, according to the legislative language. But the legislation does not require the cards.

• Page 59: The federal government will have direct, real-time access to all individual bank accounts for electronic funds transfer. Barely True: Section 163 sets out goals for electronic health records. One of the goals is to include features that “enable electronic funds transfers, in order to allow automated reconciliation” between payment and billing. The legislative summary says the intent in the section is “to adopt standards for typical transactions” between insurance companies and health care providers. The legislation generically describes typical electronic banking transactions and does not outline any special access privileges.

• Page 65: Taxpayers will subsidize all union retiree and community organizer health plans (read: SEIU, UAW and ACORN) . Pants on Fire! Section 164 creates a temporary reinsurance program to help employers or employee associations pay for coverage for workers ages 55 to 64. It does not mention labor unions or community organizer groups, though presumably they could qualify for subsidies like any other employee association that previously offered health insurance. The section’s point, however, is to offer subsidies to employer-based insurance programs, not unions or community organizers.

• Page 72: All private healthcare plans must conform to government rules to participate in a Healthcare Exchange. True. Private health care plans must conform to government rules to participate in the exchange, and this page begins an explanation of exchange rules. However, the requirement that insurance companies must conform to is also presented much earlier in the bill. We spotted an earlier reference on page 15, Section 101.

• Page 84: All private healthcare plans must participate in the Healthcare Exchange (i.e., total government control of private plans) . Mostly True. Section 203 sets rules saying that plans must offer basic plans before they can offer plans with extra benefits. These extra benefits are defined as enhanced plans and premium plans. (The unstated assumption here is that enhanced and premium plans will be more profitable for the insurance companies.) But this isn’t the page number that requires health plans to participate in the exchange. Technically speaking, private insurance plans are not required to participate. Rather, only insurance sold on the exchange will satisfy the mandate that people have health insurance. In effect, private health plans that want to sell to individuals will have to sell through the exchange, under the terms of the bill.

• Page 91: Government mandates linguistic infrastructure for services; translation: illegal aliens. Half True. Section 204 outlines more regulations for health insurance plans in the exchange. One of the requirements is that they provide “culturally and linguistically appropriate communication and health services.” Another part of the bill mentions that this includes “effective methods for communicating in plain language.” There is no mention of citizenship status.

• Page 95: The Government will pay ACORN and Americorps to sign up individuals for Government-run Health Care plan. False. Section 205 says the Health Choices commissioner is charged with publicizing the options on the health care exchange. The legislation says the commissioner “may work with other appropriate entities to facilitate the dissemination of information.” The bill does not mention ACORN or Americorps. The bill also says that the commissioner must publicize the “Exchange-participating health benefits plan options,” which would include private insurance plans.

• Page 102: Those eligible for Medicaid will be automatically enrolled: you have no choice in the matter. False. This page describes people who would qualify for Medicaid, a government insurance program for people with very low incomes. It says that individuals will be automatically enrolled in Medicaid only if they have “not elected to enroll in an Exchange-participating health benefits plan.” So the auto-enrollment only happens if they have not chosen another plan.

• Page 124: No company can sue the government for price-fixing. No “judicial review” is permitted against the government monopoly. Put simply, private insurers will be crushed. Barely True. Section 223 discusses how the government will pay doctors under the public option health insurance; they will pay 5 percent more than Medicare pays. It’s true that this section does not set out any sort of judicial review, but it specifically states that health care providers do not have to accept patients under the public option. The bill also says that the Health Choices commissioner has the authority “to correct for payments that are excessive or deficient,” taking into account “amounts paid for similar health care providers and services under other Exchange-participating health benefits plans.” There may be a broader case to be made that the government can outcompete private insurers through the public option, but this section of the plan doesn’t have to do with lawsuits or judicial review.

• Page 127: The AMA sold doctors out: the government will set wages. Barely True. Section 225 discusses payments for physicians who choose to accept the public option insurance. Again, there may be a broader case to be made that the government can outcompete private insurers through the public option, but this section of the plan only applies to payments to doctors for patients who are part of the public option. The government does not set wages for doctors because doctors are free to decline to see the patients.

I AM PRO-CHOICE, meaning, I don’t think I have the right to tell someone else when a fetus is a person and what she should do with her body. I haven’t walked in her shoes, and I don’t know the troubles she faces. I would hate to be in a position where I had to choose an abortion, but there are some cases where I think it’s the best choice. I do not believe that a 6-month+ fetus should be killed (or really a 4- or 5-month one, for that matter). I think responsibility is the best choice, but unfortunately, that doesn’t always happen. But by giving birth an unwanted child, the burden is then placed on society, and society has to pay for one person’s bad fortune or poor decision-making.

I AM ALSO PRO-CONTRACEPTION. Kids are gonna have sex, regardless of what their minister or their Bible or their school or parents teach them. (Case and point, most of my friends who got pregnant at a young age or before marriage were preacher’s kids or came from super religious/conservative families.) Also, I believe that sex is a good thing that should be practiced regularly…yet who wants to be pregnant every other year? <<NOT ME.>> This is why, if you’ve ever been out for drinks with me, you will regularly hear me raise my glass to “Sex with no babies and multiple orgasms.” NICE. (I have officially upset my mom at this point…yeah sorry mom.)

Anyway, I heard some crackpipe radio commentator yesterday talking about how “ALL BABIES ARE A BLESSING FROM GOD.” He was talking about how no matter what the circumstance – rape, child abuse, whatever – there is never an appropriate situation for abortion. He went on to say that ideas of limiting births through contraception and/or encouraging family planning were part of the liberal agenda. (Please note, I am not suggesting that all staunch pro-lifers are crackpipes; but, believe me, this guy was a CRACKPIPE.)

Let me first say that I do NOT think abortion should be your primary form of birth control. Yet, mistakes do happen, and poor judgment is often exercised. And sometimes, unexpected babies do end up being positive experiences. I get all that.

But what about little girls who are raped? You might point to adoption as the solution. Adoption? ADOPTION? How would you, at age 13, like to grow to three times your normal, adolescent circumference? And then, after nine months of vomiting…missing school…getting ostracized by family, friends and acquaintances…growing stretch marks…remembering the horrible incident that got you into this situation in the first place…and losing all your self esteem, like to push an 8-pound baby out of your tiny body, only to turn around and give it away?

I’m sure the little girl in this story would have some strong feelings about this.

Furthermore, this “journalist” on the radio went on to state that “the earth was made for humans to consume it,” and that’s why no one should worry if teenage girls are popping out little pieces of heaven. I’m not even going to address this point. IT IS THAT EFFING RIDICULOUS.

So, my message to Mr. Radio Commentator Man: Grow a vagina. Have some douchebag (or four) hold you down while he (/they) rape(s) you. Get fat, and develop stretchmarks while you’re at it. Then, push a watermelon from your nether regions. Take the precious gift from God and raise it to continue the gene pool that is your sorry-excuse-for-a-human perpetrator.

Yeahhhh……