p.s.

I may seem a bit to the left politically if you are one of my avid readers. I don’t think of myself as a socialist or a liberal or any of that. I think of myself as a humanist. I think people should be treated with humanity and understanding, is that really too much to ask? I am a believer in the ideals of Christ, but not all that born-again stuff, I’m talking about actual kindness and empathy. I’m talking about love.

Of course, watching the news and living among humanity make that a difficult task…

My husband says that if we were living in the Fifties, under the era of McCarthy, he has no doubt that I would have been hauled away by the authorities with a bag over my head, cuffed and shaming our families. He’s probably right, but I say, hey, those days might be coming back. Lord knows, these people haven’t learned from the mistakes of the past…hell, if it’s not on the standardized test, they don’t even teach it anymore.

I say, the horizon is very grey today.

Don’t cry for me….

I’m in the mood for a bagel. But I’ve got no bagels. Do I load the kid up and take him out in the pouring rain? Yeah, not too keen on that idea. But bagel….

Interesting thing yesterday: I was dressing the two year old, who was lying on his changing table. I bent down to a lower drawer to get his clothes, couldn’t have been more than 10 seconds, and when I came back up, he had somehow gotten a bottle of baby Motrin open and poured it all over himself. STICKY STICKY MAN.

Haven’t written much lately. I’ve kind of been addicted to CNN, which is awful, because it sucks. First of all, how can I take the news seriously when they do ten minutes on American Idol? I mean, that is NOT news. That’s selling a product. Then, this whole Schiavo case. First of all, I think it was unconstitutional for Congress to get involved. Some of the things Bush has said regarding the husband have made me sick, and I just can’t really go on too much about it, because it gets me too wound up. Any other administration, and this would not be an issue. The far right has got such a strangle-hold on this country, it’s distressing. When’s it going to swing the other way? When will logic and reason again be championed?

And the baseball thing too — anything to keep our focus off a war that’s taken more than 1500 American lives, 20,000 civilian lives and wounded thousands upon thousands of others. Keep us asking about steroids in the majors, not when we are going to bring our troops home.

And another thing — why do we have private firms servicing the military? Is that not something the military once did for itself? I mean, we didn’t have private firms servicing the military in WWII, right? The army supplied all of the food, paper products, and other things that the military needed, right? You know who orchestrated the whole privatization of military servicing? Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, under Bush the First. And you know what he got for that? He got to be CEO of Halliburton, the same company that was given a no-bid FIVE-YEAR contract to service the military in Iraq. The same Halliburton that Congress voted not to investigate last week; voted not to follow up on findings by the General Accounting Office and other organizations that have suggested Halliburton of mismanaging fund in Iraq. The same Halliburton that cannot substantiate almost 1.8 BILLION dollars in fees for services in Iraq. Who’s paying for that? Oh, right, that would be you and your kids and their kids.

I remember there was an uproar about ten years ago about how the military got charged like $500 for a toilet seat or whatever. That was probably the impetus for privatization. But I bet now we’re paying twice that at least.

Okay, I am going to stop now before I spiral out of control like the cost of this war…..

MOVIE LINE OF THE DAY:
(Raising Arizona)
H.I. – I’ll be taking the Huggies…and whatever cash you got.

Okay….

I was just brought to tears reading a REVIEW of a movie…..

Your Tax Dollars at Work

This is from The New York Times, and it makes me sick:

It is the kind of TV news coverage every president covets.

“Thank you, Bush. Thank you, U.S.A.,” a jubilant Iraqi-American told a camera crew in Kansas City for a segment about reaction to the fall of Baghdad. A second report told of “another success” in the Bush administration’s “drive to strengthen aviation security”; the reporter called it “one of the most remarkable campaigns in aviation history.” A third segment, broadcast in January, described the administration’s determination to open markets for American farmers.

To a viewer, each report looked like any other 90-second segment on the local news. In fact, the federal government produced all three. The report from Kansas City was made by the State Department. The “reporter” covering airport safety was actually a public relations professional working under a false name for the Transportation Security Administration. The farming segment was done by the Agriculture Department’s office of communications.

Under the Bush administration, the federal government has aggressively used a well-established tool of public relations: the prepackaged, ready-to-serve news report that major corporations have long distributed to TV stations to pitch everything from headache remedies to auto insurance. In all, at least 20 federal agencies, including the Defense Department and the Census Bureau, have made and distributed hundreds of television news segments in the past four years, records and interviews show. Many were subsequently broadcast on local stations across the country without any acknowledgement of the government’s role in their production.

This winter, Washington has been roiled by revelations that a handful of columnists wrote in support of administration policies without disclosing they had accepted payments from the government. But the administration’s efforts to generate positive news coverage have been considerably more pervasive than previously known. At the same time, records and interviews suggest widespread complicity or negligence by television stations, given industry ethics standards that discourage the broadcast of prepackaged news segments from any outside group without revealing the source.

Federal agencies are forthright with broadcasters about the origin of the news segments they distribute. The reports themselves, though, are designed to fit seamlessly into the typical local news broadcast. In most cases, the “reporters” are careful not to state in the segment that they work for the government. Their reports generally avoid overt ideological appeals. Instead, the government’s news-making apparatus has produced a quiet drumbeat of broadcasts describing a vigilant and compassionate administration.

Some reports were produced to support the administration’s most cherished policy objectives, like regime change in Iraq or Medicare reform. Others focused on less prominent matters, like the administration’s efforts to offer free after-school tutoring, its campaign to curb childhood obesity, its initiatives to preserve forests and wetlands, its plans to fight computer viruses, even its attempts to fight holiday drunken driving. They often feature “interviews” with senior administration officials in which questions are scripted and answers rehearsed. Critics, though, are excluded, as are any hints of mismanagement, waste or controversy.

Some of the segments were broadcast in some of nation’s largest television markets, including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas and Atlanta.

An examination of government-produced news reports offers a look inside a world where the traditional lines between public relations and journalism have become tangled, where local anchors introduce prepackaged segments with “suggested” lead-ins written by public relations experts. It is a world where government-produced reports disappear into a maze of satellite transmissions, Web portals, syndicated news programs and network feeds, only to emerge cleansed on the other side as “independent” journalism.

Read the whole story (it’s like 5 pages) at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/13/politics/13covert.html?hp&ex=1110776400&en=c0b6bad84e5bf46a&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Have we not always criticized countries where the government controls the media?

p.s.

Forgot to mention:

Do you thing Michael Jackson’s going to do any time? Today he showed up to court wearing pajamas. What a psycho. As if his usual courtroom attire is not enough out of the ordinary. Can this guy show more contempt for the legal process, or is he really just that out of touch?

Plus, I think it’s really scary that there are more journalists covering the Jackson trial that there are covering the war in Iraq.

Things have been crazy…

My sister-in-law had her baby last Saturday morning. He’s doing very well. He’s taking formula from a bottle, breathing on his own and is very responsive. He’s quite amazing for a preemie. He scored a 9 out of 10 on the Apgar scale right after his birth, so they all have high hopes for his recovery. By all accounts, he is perfect except for his weight. I am even told that he can lift himself off the mattress and arch his back. The nurses have all told his parents what a “feisty” little guy he is. She is recovering as well, but it was a tough pregnancy and birth.

Around my house, not much is going on. I went to the doctor on Wednesday and heard my baby’s heartbeat for the first time. Kind of weird. Other than my burgeoning size, I’ve had no other pregnancy symptoms. No sickness or anything. So, when I heard the heartbeat, it was like, yes, there is somebody in there!

Just waiting for spring. One more snowstorm, and I think I’m going to go Shining…
ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES KATE A DULL GIRL

I’ve been noticing lots of bumper stickers lately. I’ve come up with the theory that within nine out of ten owners of cars with bumper stickers, there lies the heart of a fascist.

MOVIES LINE OF THE DAY:
(Some Like it Hot)
Jerry (dressed as Daphne): Joe, I feel like everyone is staring at me.
Joe (dressed as Josephine): With those legs? Are you crazy?

Interesting

My oldest son seems to be going “commando” at every opportunity. He may start out the day wearing underwear, but when I go to put his pajamas on at night, they aren’t there. He claims to think it’s silly. I tend to agree. But is there anything more going on there? Are they not comfortable or something?I tried buying him bigger shorts, but that doesn’t seem to be helping. In fact, I just went into the powder room, where I found two pairs of Spider Man underwear stuffed in the magazine holder, one pair of Finding Nemo’s hidden behind the pedestal sink, and a Bob the Builder tucked under the toilet tank.

Now that’s silly.

Today was another one of those. First of all, the hospital induced my sister-in-law, so the baby should be here by tomorrow.

Today I finally made it to the swim class I signed up for a month ago. I haven’t been able to get there because of various snowstorms, child illnesses etc. So I get there ten minutes early, but I had to wait twenty minutes for a slot to open in the babysitting room for my two-year-old. Then, I got to class, spent fifteen minutes in there (it was great) before some kid vomitted in the pool, and we all had to be evacuated.
That’s all I have to say about that…

MOVIE LINE OF THE DAY:
(from Caddyshack)
“DOODY!”

Bye-bye, Bubba!

From AP:

PITTSBURGH, Pa. – He spent decades dodging lobster pots, but in the end, Bubba was done in by a trip to the zoo.
The 22-pound lobster died yesterday at the Pittsburgh Zoo, about a day after he was moved there from a fish market.
Bubba died in a quarantine area of the zoo’s aquarium, where he was being checked out to see if he was healthy enough to travel to a Ripley’s Believe It or Not museum.
Experts will examine Bubba to try to figure out why he died, but the owner of the fish market thinks it had to do with the stress of the move. Bob Wholey says lobsters are “very finicky.”
Bubba had spent about a week at Wholey’s Market after being caught off the coast of Massachusetts.
Marine biologists estimate Bubba was 30 to 50 years old.

Just another case of MAN vs. NATURE. I wonder who gets to eat the thing. Last year the Wall Street Journal ran a piece that found that despite conventional wisdom, larger weight lobsters are actually quite tasty. The writer of the piece ate a 40-lb lobster!

Crazy week

though it seems to be passing quickly. My sister-in-law has been in the hospital all week with pre-eclampsia. Every day might be the baby’s birthday, but she seems to be stable, so they are waiting. The longer he stays in there, the better, of course. She’s almost 33 weeks along.

I am still getting bills for the initial tests of my own pregnancy. Durning the two months I was pregnant without insurance coverage, I racked up almost two grand in bills. I cringe thinking of what might have been, had we not found another insurer.

Everything’s going to work out for the best though. You gotta have faith.
and heart.
and maybe a little bit of walking around money.

Good thing: Last night I actually got like 5 hours of uninterrupted sleep. That doesn’t happen too often, between the two kids and a husband who frequently rolls over on me. I feel like a million dollars today.

Interesting story in my local paper this morning:

BANK ROBBER DRESSES AS WOMAN

An armed robber dolled up in an unusual disguise hit a local bank Wednesday.

Forget the typical bandanna, ski mask or nylon stocking over the head – the man who robbed the bank was decked out as a woman, police said.

But he dropped some of his loot as he fled. Caught by the day’s wind, money blew around the parking lot before state troopers and some witnesses retrieved it.

The robbery occurred about 1:10 p.m.when the man gave a demand note to a clerk and displayed a handgun, a police spokeswoman said.

The clerk complied and no one was injured, she said.

Witnesses said the robber – described as a white man in his late 20s or early 30s, 5 feet 10 inches tall, 120 to 125 pounds – was wearing a black felt hat, black skirt and brown tweed blazer.

However, he was not fashionably accessorized: Police said he wore brown work boots.

Police did not say how much money was stolen or how much, if any, got lost or picked up by passers-by in the parking lot.

After the robbery, a stream of would-be customers walked up to the closed bank, some expressing frustration before walking away. Police said the bank would reopen today.

The robber has not been captured yet.

MOVIE LINE OF THE DAY:
(A Fish Called Wanda)
Otto: It’s K-k-k-Ken coming to k-k-k-kill me.

Did you know?

— One recycled aluminum can saves enough energy to power a television or computer for 3 hours or a 100-watt light bulb for 20 hours. A six-pack of recycled aluminum cans saves enough energy to drive a car 5 miles.
— Recycling one glass bottle saves enough energy to light a 100-watt light bulb for 4 hours.
— Recycling a one-gallon plastic milk jug will save enough energy to keep a 100-watt bulb burning for 11 hours.
— Recycling one pound of steel conserves enough energy to light a 60-watt bulb for 26 hours.
— Recycling a one-foot high stack of newspapers saves enough electricity to heat a home for 17 hours.

I saw this movie last night called “I (Heart) Huccabees”, but I didn’t (heart) it too much.

MOVIE LINE OF THE DAY:
(Miller’s Crossing)
Tom: He’s alright, if looks and brains don’t count.
Vera: You’d better hope they don’t.