September 30, 2009

RAPE-RAPE

Whoopi Goldberg is facing a fierce backlash after saying that film director Roman Polanski didn't commit "rape-rape" when he had unlawful sex with a 13-year-old girl. Goldberg, star of The Color Purple and Sister Act, said: "I know it wasn't rape-rape. I think it was something else, but I don't believe it was rape-rape."

Really.  What else does the article go on to say?

His victim, Samantha Gailey, told a grand jury that the director had plied her with champagne and drugs and taken nude pictures of her in a hot tub during a fashion shoot. Polanski then had sexual intercourse with her despite her resistance and requests to be taken home, she said.

Whew.  I'm glad I now understand the difference between rape and rape-rape.

So which one did Cameron Diaz mean that Bush would legalize?  Real rape or the "I'm famous so I can do whatever I want" rape?

Hollywood is completely nuts.

Awesome quote by John Nolte:

If his unspeakable deed doesn’t meet the standard, what exactly would Roman Polanski have to do in order to become a pariah in this town … I mean, besides vote for Sarah Palin?

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KEEPING GUARD

I was so touched to see that WifeUnit and her husband brought the little ewok I made to watch over their new son in the hospital.  And that the ewok donned a hazmat suit to join baby in his incubator.


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September 29, 2009

KANGAROO SWEATER

I got my first homemade baby gift the other day.  The Girl made an adorable baby sweater, one with a kangaroo pouch!  So cute.  And right around the same day, MaryIndiana sent a little kangaroo.  And, voila...


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I THOUGHT IT WAS A SANDWICH, NOT ICE CREAM

Steyn: Dog-Feces Ice Cream
A great summary of the farce at the UN last week.

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HER OWN EGGS

Mind boggling factoid of the week: if you’re going to have a little girl, her ovaries have already produced millions of primordial egg cells, which, within a few weeks, will develop into actual eggs!

And I have the joy of knowing that at this very moment, my little girl is growing perfectly normal eggs.  That one day she should be able to have a baby of her own without the problems I faced.

It's such a relief.

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NO BANG FOR THE BUCK

I reiterate that I think Bjorn Lomborg's argument that crises need to be prioritized is one of the best arguments against stopping global warming.  You can grant the premise just for argument's sake but still insist that we shouldn't spend a dollar to get a nickel's worth of good.

Imagine for a moment that the fantasists win the day and that at the climate conference in Copenhagen in December every nation commits to reductions even larger than Japan's, designed to keep temperature increases under 2 degrees Celsius. The result will be a global price tag of $40 trillion in 2100, to avoid expected climate damage costing just $1.1 trillion, according to climate economist Richard Tol, a contributor to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change whose cost findings were commissioned by the Copenhagen Consensus Center and are to be published by Cambridge University Press next year.

Unfortunately, no government program has ever been held to the bang-for-your-buck test.

But surely this has to be persuasive, right?  How could it not be?  I find it persuasive in every instance.  Take health care: I don't care if they can promise that everyone will have total coverage and no one will ever be sick again.  Our nation simply doesn't have the money now to cover 30 million new people.  Even if it were a government program I could get behind like...um...hmm...giving every law-abiding household a handgun and lessons on how to use it, we just are too far in debt to be adding new programs to the list, no matter what they are.

And certainly we have too much debt to spend $40 to get a dollar of benefit.

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September 28, 2009

I JUST WANT TO STAY HOME

On the plane on the way home, I horrifiedly figured out that by the time my baby is born, she will have already been in 18 different states.

That's WAY too much travel in nine months.


Create your own visited map of The United States

But seriously, I think I have to drive to Kentucky just on principle.

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September 27, 2009

I GOT THE COOKIE

SpouseBUZZ Live is going well, as usual.  It was nice to see each other, and we're all very relieved that we didn't have to deliver WifeUnit's baby.  She was supposed to come this weekend and instead decided to stay home and deliver a preemie.  Holy cow.  I wonder who is bigger, the baby or his ewok?

I also got a very touching gift this weekend.  FbL attended the event to represent Soldiers' Angels, and she brought me a blogging inside joke gift, one that first puzzled me but then sunk in.

She brought be a big bag of cookies...

And it made me sniffle a little.

Leaving for home soon.  Tomorrow is my last day of work.

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September 25, 2009

TRANSCONTINENTAL

I'm leaving this morning for SpouseBUZZ Live Camp Pendleton.  Will be in the gulch this weekend and thus out of the loop.  Which is good, because I could use a break from the UN and ACORN.

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September 22, 2009

CALMLY HAPPY

Last year, Army Blogger Wife mailed me her home doppler machine.  I was so excited to use it, but unfortunately I just kept using it on dead babies.  So this time around, I left it in the drawer and just relied on the weekly ultrasounds.

Last night I was lying in bed, trying to will the baby to kick where I could feel it.  I am so anxious for that stage.  I am looking forward to having the companionship, to there being someone else besides the dog whose presence is felt in my house.  And while I was lying there thinking about her, I suddenly remembered the doppler.

I found her easily, and grinned.  And then called my parents entirely too late at night so they could both listen.

I'm still mildly wary of the whole thing.  When friends get excited and squeal "You're having a baby!", I sometimes feel a stab of fear.  Like we all need to rein it in and be calmly happy instead of cartwheels happy.

But I calmly happily listened to baby's heartbeat last night.

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MY AFGHANISTAN SIGHS

I don't like thinking about Afghanistan.  I don't like reading about it, I don't like stressing about it.  One of my friends said she was worried all weekend that I hadn't heard from my husband because she had read about some local soldiers being killed.  I didn't even know it had happened.  I have busied myself with domestic issues and ostriched myself to the war.  And since my husband cannot tell me what he does and cannot talk about his life, it's easy to forget that he's not just away at summer camp.

Afghanistan bothers me, still.

But now with discussions of whether Obama will send additional troops, I have been forced to think about it a little.  But reading and thinking about it just ruffles me more.  Like this:

Hence nation-building would be impossible even if we knew how, and even if Afghanistan were not the second-worst place to try: The Brookings Institution ranks Somalia as the only nation with a weaker state.

Sigh.  I sigh about Afghanistan a lot.

McCarthy backs up Will:

Notwithstanding al-Qaeda’s departure, the idea now seems to be that we should substantially escalate our military involvement in Afghanistan to replicate the experiment that supposedly worked so well in Iraq. It’s the age of Obama, so our commanders are talking not about combat but about a stimulus package to fight the “culture of poverty.” As military officials described it to the New York Times, “the overriding goal of American and NATO forces would not be so much to kill Taliban insurgents as to make ordinary Afghans feel secure, and thus isolate the insurgents. That means using force less and focusing on economic development and good governance.” This is consistent with the delusional belief that terrorism is caused by poverty, corruption, resentment, Guantanamo Bay, enhanced interrogation tactics, Israel — in short, anything other than an ideology rooted in Islamic scripture. But before we all laugh George Will out of the room, we might remember that the Taliban was not our reason for invading. We would not have gone to war to save Afghanistan from the Taliban — which is to say, to save Afghanistan from itself.

Fred Barnes said last night that it's telling that McChrystal, who is at heart a counter-terrorism guy, is requesting additional troops for counter-insurgency.  I hope he knows what he's doing.  I hope he gets it right. 

I know he knows more than I do.

I just know I hate thinking about Afghanistan.

[hat tip to Amritas for both links]

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September 20, 2009

A PREGNANCY POST

At SpouseBUZZ: Doing This Apart

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September 19, 2009

CONSTITUTION DAY FAIL

My government class in high school was a joke.  We just memorized and regurgitated how many representatives there are and how old they have to be to run, and then we watched Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and hoped that somehow we would all learn how this marvelous American experiment works.  FAIL.  Completely.

I was just reading an article about how a Muslim girl is suing Abercrombie and Fitch because they discriminated against her for wearing a headscarf.  In the comments section, a different Muslim girl is arguing that everyone has the Constitutional right to work wherever they want.  She said a size 20 woman has the right to be a runway model.  Quote: "That's the right of an American citizen per our grand Constitution."

Does anyone even read the Constitution anymore?  Apparently everyone's high school government class was as bad as mine.

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September 18, 2009

OBAMA THE UNILATERALIST

Barack Obama, 2008:

I want to use all elements of American power to keep us safe, and prosperous, and free. Instead of alienating ourselves from the world, I want America - once again - to lead. As President, I will pursue a tough, smart and principled national security strategy - one that recognizes that we have interests not just in Baghdad, but in Kandahar and Karachi, in Tokyo and London, in Beijing and Berlin.

What about Prague and Warsaw?

The Poles and Czechs are scared.  And mad.

An editorial in Hospodarske Novine, a respected pro-business Czech newspaper, said: "an ally we rely on has betrayed us, and exchanged us for its own, better relations with Russia, of which we are rightly afraid."

So we elected Obama to end the era of unilateralism, to mend fences with alienated allies and make the world love and respect us again.

Except for the Eastern bloc, who backed George Bush.  They can get bent.

[Polish Prime Minister] Tusk did not sound pleased with Obama's announcement, telling Polish radio on Thursday, "It was an autonomous decision taken by President Barack Obama" that did not involve the Polish government.

That sounds pretty unilateral to me.

I remain flabbergasted that my president keeps siding with people like Zelaya and Putin.  Unbelievable.

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EFFECTIVE OUTCOMES

I am feeling less unsettled lately...

After the huge march on Washington last weekend, and the defunding of ACORN this week, I am feeling more like We the People can pressure the government to represent us.

Here are a few things that regular old Americans have achieved since I wrote that I was unsettled:



For an explanation of the list, in case you're not familiar with all of them, listen here.

I am feeling more optimistic.

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September 17, 2009

THEY LEFT NOTHING BUT FOOTPRINTS

Conservatives apparently give a hoot and don't pollute, moreso than liberals do.

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September 16, 2009

HE LIKES FISHSTICKS

I finally found an issue where I agree 100% with President Obama: Kanye West is a jackass.

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September 15, 2009

HELP, HELP, I'M BEING OPPRESSED!

I was racially discriminated against today.

I got in a black cashier's line at Walmart.  She took the lady in front of me and then switched off her light, saying that I'd have to change lines because she needed to close down for a few minutes.  So I hopped over to the line next to hers, behind three other people.  The black cashier finished up with the lady she was helping, puttered around for about 30 seconds, found out that she was no longer needed to help clean up another register, and then turned her light back on and motioned for a black lady who was just walking up to the checkout area to get in her line.

Raaaaacist!  She helped a black customer instead of telling me to go ahead and get back in her line!  She took a black lady who'd just arrived to checkout instead of white me, who'd been waiting for several minutes!  I need a Beer Summit!

94 percent of African-American eighth graders reported to Harris-Britt that they'd felt discriminated against in the prior three months.

Now, I don't really think it was racial discrimination at Walmart.  I think the cashier was kinda boorish and lazy, and that she didn't care who she helped next as long as she was doing her job.  When I called her on it, she apologized as if the thought had never crossed her mind to ask me to return to her line.  She didn't do it because I was white; she did it because she was unobservant and clueless.

But it got me thinking and I remembered the above statistic from a recent Newsweek article about children's racial attitudes.  If almost every single black pre-teen says they're constantly being discriminated against, then it seems to me that, if the tables were turned and a white cashier helped a white customer over a black one, some people out there are interpreting that as racism.

I don't think it's racism.  I think it's laziness, or bad manners, or tunnel vision you get from doing the same mundane task all day long.  But I don't for one second think she pushed me out of her line because I was white.  But do black people think that?  It seems some of these pre-teens probably do.  How else could they all say they've been discriminated against recently?  A few may have truly met with bigotry, but a good number of them must just be interpreting the slightest offenses as racism.

It just got me thinking that, if you try to find slights based on skin color, you will see them.  But I'd bet that much of the "discrimination" people feel they're encountering is just a misunderstanding or a breakdown in acceptable social behavior, not racism.

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BORLAUG CARRIED A WATERMELON

I'm a few days late, but I was finally prompted to say something because of Patrick Swayze. I don't mean to denigrate him at all; he was a fine actor and probably a fine man. (He was in Red Dawn, for pete's sake, so that automatically makes him OK in my book.)  But a couple days ago, Deskmerc was the only one of my Facebook friends to salute the passing of Norman Borlaug. As of last night, dozens of people were saluting Swayze. I think that's exactly backwards, and while everyone is touched that Johnny won't dance again, myself included, we all missed the fact that the greatest man who ever lived passed away this week too.


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IT'S ALL ABOUT HIM

At PowerLine: "Obama seems increasingly unable to resist the kind of specious arguments a fairly bright first year law student might make in a crunch."  Oy.

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