He's had a rather significant cold for the last week and half, and missed quite a bit of school (as I've missed work).  Ear pain this morning sent us to the doctor, assuming an ear infection.  His ears are fine, but his lungs?  Not so much. 

3 scrips from the doc sent us to Kroger, where we did the week's shopping (mostly, sans list as we were) whilst waiting for the meds.  Both boys were bouncing off the walls, which left Mommy threatening severe entertainment impairment, and frustrated and flustered.  Got home, called Mom four states away, accomplishing nothing but making myself feel guilty for calling when Mom said she felt terrible for not being here (seriously.  Not Mom's fault we live forever away.  It is what it is, and I probably shouldn't have said anything, but Hubby's been off traveling for the same week and a half, and I was feeling the need to share).

Then , lovely surprise of surprises, Kroger did'nt actually give us all of the bottles.  The neighbors aren't home yet, so we all have to pile back in the car to run back to the store and pick up the steroid they forgot to give us when we were first there.

This is after $200 for bread, milk, other staples and some snacks for the next week, $30 for the visit copay and $30 more for the meds (and I'm on a 90/10, so this isn't quite the end of the bill).

Yeah, the economy's great, especially since I'm not at all worried about repercussions from missing two weeks of work because the kids are ill.

Actually, my director is extremely family friendly, and I have the ability to do some work from home, so this is probably not the end of the world.  But I recognize that, in this day and age, we're very lucky.  We have health insurance, I have a job that's at least somewhat flexible, and I work for people who understand my situation. 

I am so not the norm.

But you know what?  I think I should be.  I guess that's why I can't vote "real" conservative (whatever that means today).  I'm all about personal responsibility, believe me.  Sometimes, however, personal responsibility means taking actions that are contrary to "conservative" interests - like a woman working for a living, or taking time to take care of family when they're ailing while trying to maintain a job, or just sucking it up and doing what needs to be done, even if I'd rather the situation were different.

Sometimes we don't get our first choice, you know?  Maude knows, my first choice would be my son healthy, not suffering from freaking pneumonia.

So, posting will be what it is this week.  TV is being devoted to Spongebob, and spare computer moments should probably go more to paid work.

So we're settling in to watch "Christmas in Connecticut" on the TiVo, and Older Son pipes up with:


Nothing like a dose of seven year-old wisdom.

Found this over at Lance Mannion's place:

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Northeast   Judging by how you talk you are probably from north Jersey, New York City, Connecticut or Rhode Island.  Chances are, if you are from New York City (and not those other places) people would probably be able to tell if they actually heard you speak.Philadelphia
Philadelphia
The Inland North
The Midland
Boston
The South
The West
North Central
What American accent do you have? QuizGoToQuiz on GoToQuiz

I say "bizarre" because I've lived most of my life in the South and have spent maybe a few weeks in the Northeast.  I work with a guy from Philly and there's no way anyone with ears would ever confuse our accents.  But apparently my ability to enunciate the difference between "pen" and "pin" disqualifies my scintillatingly attractive drawl.  Guess I'll comfort myself with the notion that Younger Son likes gree-uts.

Oh, and for the record, I take issue with question number 8:

1 All 3 sound different
2 Mary and merry sound the same but marry is different from them
3 All 3 sound the same

To my ears, none of the above.  Mary and marry sound alike, but merry is different.  And who on earth pronounces bag like vague?

Shorter House Ethics Committee on leadership's handling of Mark Foley: You guys didn't do your jobs.  You didn't do your jobs on purpose.  But not doing your jobs has become so much a part of doing your job that we can't really punish you just because you threw a few 16 year-olds to the wolf.

Check left, check right.  All clear.  Deep breath.

Now, let that be a lesson to you and don't let it happen again or we might have to reprimand you.  Or something.  So there.

Hairflip.  Exit, stage right.

It's Conversations With My Logs!

1)  Examples of irony in Spongebob - Taking "irony" at its word (using words to convey the opposite of their literal meaning), I don't know that there are many.  Spongebob is, himself, a terribly earnest character, always saying what he means and meaning what he says.  Ditto for his sidekick Patrick.  Squidward might come the closest, but is crochety enough to generally just blurt out the negatives without much care for the subtleties of polite conversation. 

Spongebob loves his dead-end job as a fry cook and cannot wait to go to work every morning.  In the realm of adult reality, I suppose you could stretch this to situational irony if you were to offer enough commentary regarding post-modern society, work hours versus work ethics, and the impossibility of earning a living wage even as a 24/7 fry cook (let alone being able to afford therapy from your nemesis).

But I don't think Spongebob  is really meant to support all of that.  I think Spongebob is just supposed to be fun.

2)  Bible Baptist views on women having children - Yikes.  Okay, here goes.  Bible Baptists, as a rule, believe that women should find complete and total fulfillment in birthing and raising children, that women working outside of the home are contributing to the moral and social decline they see in the world around us, and that women who do not stay at home to have children are selfish.

Needless to say, I disagree.  But there you go.

I'm not linking to this stuff, by the way, but you can find a BB sermon or two on the matter by googling "bible baptist" and motherhood.

3)  8 week fetus in utero - Are you looking for pictures?  If so, there's one to the right.  If you're looking more for standard development information, here goes:

At 8 weeks gestation, a fetus measures around 6/10 of an inch.  Eyelids begin to develop at this point.  The embryonic tail will disappear soon if it hasn't already, and organs, muscles and nerves begin to function - the fetus can now flex its wrists!

As for you, it varies.  First time moms may still be able to wear their regular clothes, while second and third (or more) time moms may already be breaking into their stash of elastic waistbands.  Morning sickness could be coming, or going, or settling in for a long winter's nap.  It's cliched because it's true - every pregnancy is different.

4)  Full script of Death of a Salesman - Since this is still under copyright (not in the public domain), it should not be available for free anywhere on the web.  You might be able to find it on a site that sells ebooks, but I think your best bet is an actual bookseller like Powells, Barnes & Noble, or Amazon. 

Must be the DoaS time of year, as I'm seeing a spike in people looking for it.  

5)  Wyomingans - Wikipedia says they like to be called Wyomingites.

At the request of the battery industry (and other producers of lead pollutants), the EPA is considering removing lead from a list of regulated air toxins.  Their reasoning, according to Scientific American, is that lead levels in the air have fallen 90% since lead was first added to the list in the 70s, so they can now consider that mission accomplished and allow lead pollution to ramp back up.

Rep. Harry Waxman (D-CA) wrote EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson, urging him to:

"Misdirected" is a tad more charitable than I felt upon first reading the news.  "Asinine" and "idiotic" sprang more immediately to mind.

Hey, EPA, while you're at it, why don't you just go ahead and okay asbestos and chlordane for use in human habitations?  I mean, now that use is way down from a few years ago, it seems safe enough to poison an entirely new generation with lackadaisical standards benefiting corporate pocketbooks at the expense of public health, right?

Like most people, I have this internal barometer that slides up or down as I read news stories.  This particular item set that indicator a-fluttering, bouncing up and down like a cake-high 5 year old at an all-out birthday bash:

Whenever one of the arms of this particular administration begin reaching for things, my hackles rise.  Call it Pavlovian, but historic repetition of complete and utter disregard for what "the people" think or need in favor of what the political apex momentarily hankers for has taught me that when this government begins to ask about a program which benefits working families more than it benefits corporations or the wealthy, then that program is not long for this world.

Brian Reid, the author of the WaPo article, also wondered what this meant, and found an AP story (quoted from the WaPo text):

"This is meant to be a very objective review," Victoria Lipnic, assistant secretary for the Labor Department's Employment Standards Administration, said in an interview with The Associated Press.

"We're genuinely in search of information and having looked at the issues now for a number of years ... it became apparent we really needed some fresh thinking on this. I am hoping that is what all of this will yield," she said.

Hmm, "fresh thinking," eh?  Like Mr. Reid, I would love to see some "fresh thinking" which included paid leave under FMLA (which is currently unpaid), extended the leave, expanded protections (both in people covered and in specific job-protection).  I'd also like to see some creative solutions to the problems inherent in being both a medical caregiver and a wage-earner, such as mandating that companies which offer telecommuting options to employees should also offer that option, on a trial basis (say, 30 days to begin, with the option to reevaluate and continue in 30 day increments) to employees in good standing applying for FMLA-covered leave.

However, the Pavlovian response rises again, and I cannot help but wonder if the fears of a couple of years ago, that the Bush administration would attempt to gut FMLA in its continuing war against working families, were prescient and that, politically wounded as the cur is, he lashes out now to grab his petty revenge against a nation which repudiated him.  After all, the hard right, which still supports the guy, usually "encourages" women to stay at home, rendering largely FMLA moot for their own families (when taken with the fundamentalist view that women should stay at home and be caregivers, while men should work and be heads of the house, and never the twain shall meet) and, as anything that benefits women who work outside the home over women who do not must come from Satan and cannot, therefore, be used, targeting the law would do real, painful damage to those uppity folks who had the nerve to oppose the Supreme Will of the self-styled demigod that is George Bush.

Or maybe not.  I really don't know.  The "chilling little note" reads as follows:

The deadline for comments is 5:00PM EST, February 2, 2007.  If you've some experience with FMLA, please send a note to the Labor Department at whdcomments@dol.gov.  Fresh thinking doesn't have to equal a net negative, and I'll be happy to provide my input if it means protecting and/or expanding protections for working families.

Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA) is such a credit to the state.  I really cannot tell you how impressed I am to find him in the Washington Post griping about the idea of actually having to, you know, work for his paycheck next year.

Kingston's not up in arms about the deterioration of real wages for working people, or the decline of the manufacturing industry causing loss of jobs in his home state, or even, like our own dear state legislature, peeved at the idea that he can't get pre-sweetened tea on demand.  No, he's ticked that he'll be forced to show up for work before 6:30 PM on Mondays and won't be able to leave before 2:00 PM on Fridays once Congress reconvenes on January 4, 2007.

Poor, poor man.  He says his marriage will suffer in his absence.  Perhaps he should ask those of his constituency who work double shifts to make ends meet, or those husbands and wives who pass in the night working opposite shifts because they cannot afford childcare, or those where a spouse accepts a job with constant, unrelenting travel because no other viable option presents itself, for tips on how they make it work, this marriage and family thing, with the constant demands of time away.  At least Kingston has the comfort of a fat paycheck, and a secure pension, and snazzy little fundraisers to break the monotony of the hell-on-wheels that is the long commuting cubicle maze of today's working family.

Kingston maintains time in the district keeps him grounded, that it's too easy to be seduced by the "Mr. Congressman" kowtowing found in Washington DC.  If the siren's song is one he hasn't the fortitude to fight on his own, there exist bloggers who are quite amenable to keeping his feet firmly planted on earth.  Amazingly enough, these bloggers are accessible even from the hallowed halls of Congress.

I empathize with the poor man, being forced to keep a seat warm for more than 1000 hours a year when he'd much rather spend time with his family, or on the lecture circuit, or raising money at fancy dos for his next campaign.  It's terrible, this having to work for a living, a crying shame, a travesty of justice.

Poor Jack.  Poor Georgia, being represented by a man who finds the duty for which he volunteered so onerous.  Maybe next election Mr. Kingston will get what he apparently truly desires: permission to stay home.  Permanently.

The House voted yesterday to fund the preservation of 10 internment camp used to house Japanese-Americans during WWII.   The National Park Service seems to be grumbling about the expense of it all, but I believe that in the last 6 years we've spent $38MM on plenty of things worse than preserving the history of our civil rights.

Except that we have already allowed it to happen again.

Oh, we haven't pulled up stakes on entire ethnicities and forced them into middle-of-nowhere barracks.  Yet.  But we have abdicated our right to even a pretense of privacy, we have abandoned habeas corpus, and a portion of our citizens would, given the opportunity, gladly alienate anyone not professing at least a surface-deep and temporarily-abiding belief in Christian theology - particularly those nasty Muslims threatening to take oaths on their own stupid book instead of the holiest of holies Bible (though I've yet to determine which translation) (USA Today comment section).

We have Jose Padilla, an American citizen, who was held without charge for three years.  Held in a modern day internment camp, which surpassed the shocking abomination of those 50 years ago by including physical and psychological torture as part of the daily fare, Mr. Padilla was systematically morphed into more than a citizen with the wrong sort of pedigree, or perhaps a more accurate characterization would be "less than," he was turned into little more than "a piece of furniture."

Congress may well recognize the 50 year old gross error of treating a swath of citizens as through the slant of their eyes or the cadence of their accents somehow unfailingly points to a treasonous tendency, but they are blinded to a worse atrocity perpetuated today - that citizens are not only being held in modern camps without charge, but are there being systematically dehumanized in the name of the very rights upon which such actions gleefully trample.

This is not to say that the US government should ignore threats where it finds them.  In finding them, however, the government should be obliged to provide some proof, and formally charge the individual(s), and try them in open courts of law.  With few exceptions, this has been our history for the last 250 years.  More than just a symbol of our national values, it is confirmation of them and testimony to the lives lost in securing them.

Yesterday, the Congress voted to preserve the internment camps used against Japanese-Americans in WWII as a reminder of our national hubris, that we might never allow such a thing again.  Too late, I think, for some.

As part of a nationwide effort to highlight the OTC availability of Plan B, Planned Parenthood centers will be offering free emergency contraception tomorrow, December 6, 2006.  Stop by any participating Planned Parenthood Health Center to receive one free dose to keep at home.  Call 1-800-230-PLAN if you are unsure of locations near you.

Quantities are limited and will be dispensed on a first-come, first-served basis.  Many Centers will offer rain checks for later redemption should their supplies run out.

Dennis Prager, in what is an apparent attempt to climb out of the bigoted little foxhole he dug for himself last week, now suggests Representative-elect Keith Ellison (D-MN) should be permitted to swear his oath of office on the holy book of his faith, the Qu'ran, but only if he puts a Christian Bible on top.  Prager suggests this "compromise" would satisfy both him and "the vast majority of Americans."

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but "vast majority of Americans" don't appear to be experiencing mega-wedgies over this the way Prager is.  The vast majority of Americans, even the vast majority of conservative pundits, have, in fact, disowned Prager's ranting as nonsense, bigotry, or both.

This latest ridiculousness comes on the heels of calls for Prager's removal from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council, a position to which the president appointed him in August, and which is meant to educate people on the history and dangers of racial hatreds and "encourage visitors to reflect upon the moral and spiritual questions raised by the events of the Holocaust" (US Holocaust Memorial Museum).

Now, despite last week's insistence that swearing on the Qu'ran (or anything other than the Bible) was the equivalent of swearing on Mein Kampf, Prager attempts to rewrite history with the following:

The issue absolutely was one of religious freedom.  Relative to the Congressional Oath of Office, Article VI, Clause 3 of the Constitution states:
A modern religious test would include forcing an elected official to swear on any religious text at all, but particularly requiring him or her to swear upon the text of some fallacious national or supposed historical State religion.

As to the status of "the most important text in American history," One could easily say the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution was the most important text in American history.  One could even make a case for the Gettysburg Address, the Emancipation Proclamation, or the Magna Carta, but the Bible - regardless of what those on the far right would like to think - is not the most important text of our nation's history.  To say that it is, is a slap in the face to every non-Christian who ever died protecting Mr. Prager's right to spit upon their graves.

But I guess that's fine with Prager, so long as he's not the target.  Thieves only care about property rights, after all, when the property being stolen is their own.

---

See also: Wasn't this Discussed in High School Civics?

In the wake of the 2006 midterms giving Democrats control of the upcoming 110th Congress, US Ambassador to the UN John Bolton tendered his resignation on Friday.  Given the filibuster threat, launched when Dems were the minority in the Senate, that led to his recess appointment, the prospects for Bolton's Senate confirmation looked even gloomier now that the party will enjoy the majority in the next Senate. 

Though during his relatively brief tenure Bolton largely avoided being the supremely belligerent muck-up many had anticipated, he was never able to convert the majority of the opposition into support.  With few exceptions, at best, he managed to work his way up from outright antipathy to indifference verging on dislike.  Unlike the President, Bolton apparently knows a futile, losing battle when he sees it, and has chosen not to pursue the position any further.

President Bush accepted Bolton's resignation today, stating that he did so with "deep regret" and that he was "disappointed" in the "obstructionism" shown by Democrats in refusing to grant the Prince's every wish, noting:

Of course, Mr. Bush glosses over the fact that Bolton did not have the votes even to get out of the Foreign Relations Committee when it was controlled by Republicans, indicating that it was not Democrats being obstructive so much as Senators of both stripes exercising their constitutional right to both "advise" and "consent."  Further, Bolton lacked the votes because the Bush administration did what it typically does when asked to provide documents relating to anything other than the latest advance in erectile dysfunction medication - it categorically refused to hand over that which was requested.
And here's a newsflash for the President - while the political climate engendered by the American preoccupation with salacious detail and exacerbated by the hypocritical legacy of the Republican Class of 1994 certainly contributes to the dearth of ethical, qualified, talented individuals in public service, George W. Bush has personally done more to prevent the qualified from serving, and to advance cronyism to heights heretofore unimagined, than any person or group of people in recent memory - including Democratic senators who occasionally woke from their stultifying slumber to muster one of their infrequent attempts at oversight of this pugilistic Executive.

It is not Bolton's resignation that speaks to the woeful lack of the worthy in our current leadership, but the leadership itself who, finding no better standard for public service than an oil-slicked cockroach on crack, has sought every opportunity to live under that base expectation.

So now we must wait for the President's next stroke of appointment brilliance; I'm giving 3-2 odds on Chuck Norris.