A PRESENT FOR A NERD BABY
I can finally post a photo of a recent baby gift. WifeUnit's husband is a Star Wars nut, and I have decided that I really get a kick out of making baby presents that are geared towards the dads. So when I learned they were having another baby, I went searching teh internets for a good pattern.
I'm a novice crocheter, but Lucy's pattern wasn't too hard to follow. I just had a hard time with the face fur: I made two heads and a couple different faces until I got the one I liked.
And I showed that hat to the multitude in my house and there was much excitement.
Posted by: airforcewife at September 14, 2009 07:48 PM (CDkfD)
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That totally rocks! I'm still knitting on my loom. I made one bootie. Can't make the other one because I can't remember how I did the first one. Until I get smart, I'll have to live vicariously through you
Posted by: Susan at September 14, 2009 08:10 PM (EU2Wl)
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Oh Ma Lord, I LOVE it! That has got to be one of the most awesome things I've ever seen!
Posted by: sharona at September 14, 2009 08:25 PM (BeRta)
Posted by: Miss Ladybug at September 14, 2009 11:17 PM (paOhf)
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I truly love that I got to see the look on Mark's face when he opened it. Even if having a mystery package sitting around the house waiting for him to get home was HARD.
I'll have to see if the seller will add one more child size to my mom's order for last year's Christmas present. The three boys with matching hats would be pretty awesome in a supremely dorky way.
I am so bad, I will confess, that the first thing that popped in my Star Wars challenged mind was Sand People. And not Ewoks. I'm not even sure if Star Wars has Sand People or what.
And I'll just say thank you again. I think presents for Dads and babies is pretty awesome as far as ideas go.
Posted by: wifeunit at September 15, 2009 06:42 AM (4B1kO)
A CROSSROADS OF SORTS
While I feel that the majority of infertility blogging is behind me, and since I don't plan to blog about my kid once she's here, I feel trapped between moving on and keeping you notified of my progress. Many of you have been with me from the beginning, from the day I wrote my post asking for advice for someone who is thinking of getting pregnant. You have helped me through hard times and rallied behind little John Elway baby this time around. I remain amazed at how many fans my baby has, all because I opened up and tried to be honest about the infertility bane. I tried to tell it like it was, in hopes that I could process it and that maybe someone out there would feel a little less alone in her journey. I am so grateful that you have kept reading my nonsense along the way and encouraged me to keep sharing the good and the ugly. My baby is already more celebrated and loved by complete strangers than I ever dreamed possible.
So I hate to leave you hanging. I will update from time to time on my progress.
I am 15 weeks along. Yesterday I had an appointment with a fantastic nurse practitioner. She spent an hour with me, longer than all the time I spent with my fertility doctor combined over the past year. She answered all my questions and repeated that I am in charge of my pregnancy and they will do anything they can to give me knowledge and help me along. I got a great vibe off of her and hope that I continue to work with people like her.
She listened to baby's heartbeat, and right in the middle of it was a big THUD. Baby kicked the ultrasound wand. I couldn't feel it, but we both heard it and laughed.
I am doing well. I have a tummy and look newly pregnant. My mind over matter decision seems to have worked: the day I announced I would no longer be morning sick, I started eating again. I have gained back the weight I lost in the first trimester and have just hit the hungry phase over the past few days. Yesterday, out of the blue, I wanted Ruffles and onion dip. I may come to regret the fact that I no longer eat only fruit and water...
The nurse practitioner also told me to avoid unpleasantness as much as I can. She said that with my
history of loss and a deployed husband, I will be prone to anxiety. So,
she said, the best thing to do is to have as much fun as possible. Eat
fun things, do fun activities, and try to make this the
hap-hap-happiest six months of my life. Sounds good to me. I plan to
play skee-ball soon.
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Awesome! I love that last paragraph, and I'm sending tons of fun and happy thoughts your way.
Posted by: FbL at September 12, 2009 08:42 AM (HyNTm)
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Sounds like an excellent plan, except that if I were in your position, I think I'd opt for something other than onion dip ;-)
Posted by: Miss Ladybug at September 12, 2009 09:40 AM (paOhf)
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Onion dip sounds delish right about now. I'm glad you'll keep updating, otherwise curiosity would get the best of me and I would resort to flooding your inbox with emails (oh wait, I've already done that)
Posted by: dutchgirl at September 12, 2009 11:45 AM (hLAkQ)
She spent an hour with me, longer than all the time I spent with my fertility doctor combined over the past year.
Finally you get the attention you deserve! The 'quality' of care you got from your doctor never ceases to appall me. I imagine him as a heartless, vile version of the doctor I saw last year who ran his clinic like a drive-thru - nice guy, but obviously in a hurry.
In the idiocratic world that's coming, drive-thru medicine will be the norm. You'll yell your problem into a speaker. "I, like, don't feel so good or something!" Then some teenager at the window will hand you a bag of random drugs. For more 'care', you can stand in line inside McDoctor's.
Wishing you much hap-hap-happiness ...
Posted by: Amritas at September 12, 2009 11:51 AM (h9KHg)
I would like to help you have some fun the weekend after next when we are going back to Cali, Cali, Cali (oops, sorry! couldn't resist!).
Whatcha say, sister? Want to sit by each other blogging questions and answers to each other like we did in Vegas? Or, sit waiting for 4 hours for dinner like we did in Virginia only to realize I ate your Mom's food? Maybe we can stuff goodie bags for a bit and then go the the computer center at the hotel and confirm our flights home? We are a laugh a MINUTE, I'm tellin' ya!
Seriously, though, I'm looking forward to seeing you again!
Posted by: Guard Wife at September 12, 2009 05:26 PM (EvsXa)
Even though you call me after your appointments, please continue to write about your pregnancy. It's fun reading about what happens at your visits ( and sometimes sad), but I still want to read. I would imagine the people interested in hearing from you outweigh those very, very, few who don't care to hear about your pregnancy, which I always wonder if people don't like to hear your opinions on politics, military info, pregnancies, etc., why do they even visit your site? Your mama
Posted by: Sarah at September 13, 2009 01:12 AM (0DENp)
I am coming out of lurkdom just to let you know how much I'd like to hear about your baby. I've been reading your blog for sometime and have been praying for this to be......so, if you can, please keep us in the loop.
Enjoy the onion dip...I may have some right now as a kindred spirit (you don't have to ask me twice)
Posted by: Trudy at September 13, 2009 08:12 AM (OAPSQ)
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Can we set up a betting pool for the next strange food craving?
Posted by: deskmerc at September 13, 2009 12:43 PM (3rYlD)
and please please please tell us what you name her! As a long time reader I feel like I have a vested interested and would be really sad if only ever knew your baby as "Daisy" or some other pseudonym. I'm just saying...
Lots of luck!
Posted by: Gina at September 14, 2009 03:38 PM (2mX2s)
Hurray for happiness! I seriously am so thrilled for you that it's practically like my own baby! I keep looking for cute outfits that I can send her when she's born. I'm waiting to find that "perfect" one! Yay for 15 weeks and hurray for a good nurse prac!
Posted by: Stacy at September 14, 2009 04:39 PM (JKqIL)
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Terrific news. Hope you have lots of fun in the next few months, watch funny movies, eat lots of "not so good for you" stuff. Chips and onion dip is a good start.
Posted by: Pamela at September 14, 2009 10:58 PM (Egn5l)
WHY IS THERE STILL A HOLE?
Like Glenn Beck, my anger has been more focused lately on my own government than on the enemy. Even with my husband in Afghanistan, I have spent the majority of my time fretting over the 10th Amendment.
I thought this was worth watching and thinking about yesterday...
Posted by: Sarah at
09:13 AM
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I am reminded of Nelson Ascher's post again today.
The problem is that I do not want to waste a milligram of my
anger on all the idiots who have been getting ready to show us how
idiotic they are. We're at a point where to be too angry at, say,
Chomsky and the BBC, Old Europe and ANSWER, second and third rate
entertainers and academics is to give them a kind of victory. They
deserve disdain. Anger needs to remain concentrated like light in a
laser beam, we must direct it toward its rightful target: Islamofascism
first and foremost. If we spend too much time getting mad at those who
are but idiots we run the risk of forgetting, even if only for a
second, that it is the Muslim/Arab religious fanatics who are the
ENEMY. In a way, that's the idiots' main weapon: to attract a wrath
that could be more usefully directed to the really dangerous enemies.
Whenever we're not thinking about the Jihadists we are losing some very
precious time. And anger."
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I don't think this is a time for you to be angry. Your focus is in the right place: your pregnancy. And you have not forgotten 9/11. Otherwise you wouldn't have posted this.
Your focus will be on your daughter for many years to come. This doesn't necessarily mean you've shut off Nelson's laser beam. On the contrary, you're training a member of the next generation of laser riflemen. Even if your daughter never becomes a gun enthusiast, she must be armed with the greatest weapons of the West: its ideas.
She must be loyal to the ideas that our government has betrayed (emphasis mine):
The State Department’s new “democratic†constitutions
for Afghanistan and Iraq are a disgrace: establishing Islam as the
state religion and elevating sharia as fundamental law. That is not
exporting our values; it is appeasing Islamism. It is putting on
display our lack of will to fight for our principles, which only
emboldens our enemies.
Can you imagine if the Axis got new constitutions like the Afghan and Iraqi constitutions after World War II? What happened to the America that won that war?
Recall, for example, the spectacle of the
Christian prosecuted for apostasy a couple of years back by the
post-Taliban, U.S.-backed Afghan government. He had to be whisked out
of the country because it’s not safe for an ex-Muslim religious convert
in the new Afghanistan. It’s not safe for non-Muslims, period.
Several years ago, she converted from Islam to Christianity ... After her father threatened to kill her for apostasy, a
crime under Islamic Sharia law, Rifqa hitchhiked to the bus station and
fled to Florida [from Ohio].
The 9/11 attacks were extensively planned, over long
periods of time, in, among other places, Berlin, Madrid, San Diego,
Florida, Oklahoma, and Connecticut. Clearly, thriving democracy in
those places provided no security.
A country that sacrifices for its enemies (emphasis mine):
And what we had our hands full with in Iraq and Afghanistan was
nation-building. Quite apart from the inherent futility of trying to
democratize fundamentalist Muslim countries, our efforts in those two
places were doomed if we failed to address Iran’s promotion of
terrorism and its intolerable nuclear threat. What has happened to Iraq
has happened because we lacked the will to deal with Iran. We left
unaccomplished the mission that was vital to our national interests
while laboring exhaustively to create Islamic democracies that are
either hostile or useless to us.
A country that imports sharia, the antithesis of your ideas, into places like Ohio. Ohio!
None of that is primarily the fault of - as Nelson put it - "Chomsky and the BBC, Old Europe and ANSWER, second and third rate
entertainers and academics". I'm not mad at them. I laugh at them. I even laugh at the first-rate entertainers and academics who venture out of their fields to support the latest Leftist fashion. They're just a sideshow, a distraction. Let's focus on our real external and internal enemies.
We can’t stop Muslim countries from being Islamist. That
is their choice. It should be no concern of ours who rules them as long
as they do not threaten American interests. When they inevitably do
threaten us, or allow their territories to be launch pads for
terrorists, we should smash them. But the price of defending our nation
cannot be spending years — at a cost of precious lives and hundreds of
billions of dollars — in a vain attempt to give people who despise us a
way of life they don’t want.
The question for me is, what do we do about the latter, about our enemies within? Can we simply keep voting them out of office? Instead of worrying about freedom for Islamists abroad, we should worry about the future of freedom here. As McCarthy suggested,
The surge we need is at home: to roll back Islamism’s
infiltration of our schools, our financial system, our law, and our
government. In addition to not being universal, the “values of the
human spirit†are not immortal. If we don’t defend them in the West,
they will die.
But there are more threats than terrorism. Recently we have seen a homegrown surge against socialism in the form of tea parties - of Rightist protests against Dr. gOvernment. Our citizen-troops may win this battle. But can they keep winning? Or will they - we - eventually be outnumbered by those who vote for 'free' handouts? Will we have to retreat to our gulch?
PS: Nelson, wherever you are, I miss you.
Posted by: Amritas at September 11, 2009 10:20 AM (+nV09)
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I think my anger is spread thin because I'm just so tired. TIRED. Tired of the constant deployments and TDYS, tired of fighting at home and keeping up the face for those deployed to keep their morale up, tired of the constant attacks and name-calling, tired of seeming to take two steps back for every step forward, and tired because it seems like we're still on the brink in so many places.
I'm not ready to give up, I'm just tired. I need a rest, and there doesn't seem to be one in sight. I'm still angry, and I think that's why I refuse to give up, but it's hard to focus that anger when you're overwhelmed.
On the other hand, I've also ever been one to to smack myself about whining when seeing someone else's situation. How can I complain about being tired when I think about what Britain went through in WWII? My children and I don't have to retreat into the metro stations to avoid bombing raids every night. We can eat whatever we want - my grandmother had shortages.
How can I complain about being tired when there were members of my husband's family who went through Stalingrad? My fatigue is NOTHING compared to that.
I'm lucky, and I have no right to slow down. But sometimes I do. And that's why my anger is spread thin. But days like today are what cause me to regroup and regather and remember what we're fighting for.
I'm tired, but I have not forgotten.
Posted by: airforcewife at September 11, 2009 11:37 AM (CDkfD)
I REMAIN SHOCKED TOO
Jonah Goldberg says, "I have no idea why I still have the capacity to be shocked by such things." Thomas Friedman Is a Liberal Fascist
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Translation: Thomas Friedman is a good guy! A true friend of the people ... the People's Republic of China:
One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by
a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can
also have great advantages. That one party can just impose the
politically difficult but critically important policies needed to move
a society forward in the 21st century. It is not an accident that China
is committed to [blah blah blah ... lotsa good green stuff] ...
Say ä½ å¥½ ni hao (hello) to our new role model! If we Great Leaders weren't unselfishly dedicated to saving you from capitalism, we'd let the PRC's "reasonably enlightened group of people" rule you. Our cities, true-blue zones like New York City, will be the next Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen, and the rest of America can be "impoverished" like the rest of the PRC. And under "The Firm Hand of the Benign Strongman", the number of patents filed by Omericans will be reduced by 99.7%. (90,000 American patents were filed in the US in 2002, but only 297 PRC patents were filed in the US in 2003.) Innovation requires freedom. Great Leaders don't require innovation. They just need lots of followers. So let's add 300 million more. Annex America. Learn æ™®é€šè¯ Putonghua, I mean Mandarin, the exciting è¯è¨€ yuyan (language) of the future that nearly half of the PRC's population aren't fluent in! Welcome to Friedman's flat 世界 shijie (world) where all will be equally poor except for an elite of smart people like us!
Posted by: kevin at September 09, 2009 02:57 PM (+nV09)
A coal mine accident early on Tuesday killed 13 people and 66 others were missing in central China's Henan Province, the Xinhua news agency reported, citing the state work safety watchdog.
China's mines are the deadliest in the world, due to lax safety standards and a rush to feed demand from a robust economy. More than 3,000 people died in coal mine accidents in 2008 alone.
**
Part of China's problem with mine safety is due to the fact that they're at an earlier stage of economic development than we are. Part of it, though, is that China's government doesn't have to be excessively concerned with casualties among those Obama likes to call "working families."
I wonder whether Friedman would prefer to be a coal miner in China or in the United States.
Posted by: david foster at September 09, 2009 07:20 PM (uWlpq)
My husband has sent a couple emails lately that show he's been thinking a lot about our daughter. He's wondering what she'll look like and how their relationship will be. I find it endearing. I haven't thought about her much beyond a theoretical level yet, so I found it cute that my husband thinks about her concretely.
But today I realized that someday, like Chuck, my husband will get to do this.
It's the pink jacket. The jacket just made that picture.
Posted by: chuck at September 08, 2009 10:49 PM (bMH2g)
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"H-hit"? That's so un-humanitarian, so un-Castro! We'll have to work harder to get rid of that Second Amendment, but nuclear disarmament comes first!
When U.S. President Barack Obama presides over a meeting of world leaders in
the Security Council on Sep. 24, he will provide a high profile political platform
for two of the most sensitive issues at the United Nations: nuclear non-
proliferation and nuclear disarmament.
We fear your children. They might vote us out of office!
Posted by: kevin at September 09, 2009 11:22 AM (+nV09)
I'm also looking forward to seeing her sitting in the recliner with her daddy watching a baseball game with her one of many cute little Cardinals outfits!
Mama
Posted by: Sarah at September 13, 2009 01:16 AM (0DENp)
Count me in as relieved and thrilled that Van Jones was forced into resignation. He was a big part of the reason I wrote that I was unsettled. The fact that a man like that was anywhere near the White House is chilling.
In light of all we now know, this gauzy January 12 profile of Jones in The New Yorker is well worth a read. What do you see? I see the too-rapid rise of an inexperienced and poorly vetted man (poorly vetted by the entire liberal establishment, not just the White House) adept at getting and wasting vast sums of money for virtually non-existent plans, all based on seductive political rhetoric rather than substance.
I just watched David Axelrod, the top ranking political advisor in the White House, and Robert Gibbs, the President's spokesman on "Meet the Press" and "This Week" respectively. Neither of them was willing, even after repeated questioning, to offer a single negative word about Van Jones. Not one word. A 9/11 Truther and defender of Mumia-Abu Jamal is not radical enough for this White House to distance itself from the man in any way. Again and again, this White House has been offered chances to condemn the man's views and they have willfully and quite deliberately refused.
The point, of course, is that Obama vetted Jones just fine. President Obama is not Mr. Magoo — haplessly gravitating to Truther Van and Ayers and Dohrn and Klonsky and Davis and Wright and the Chicago New Party and ACORN, etc. Jones is a kindred spirit. Obama knows exactly who he is. Jones was given a non-confirmation job precisely because that circumvented the vetting process. This isn't one of those things that just happen. This is Barack "Transparency" Obama gaming the system.
When Van Jones talks of the aims of the civil rights movement and its initial minimalist agenda, he references the ultimate desire of 'redistributing all wealth.' When one collates that revelation with Obama's own off-handed "spread the wealth" comment, his 'fair share' sermons, and his 2001 public radio interview thoughts on “the issues of redistribution of wealth,and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in society,†we begin to see a pattern in which one’s income and wealth do not properly belong to the earner, but are seen as illegitimate and thus legitimately can be redistributed to others.
I am glad that man is gone. But the fact he was ever there in the first place still alarms me.
I agree - it's great that one radical Communist revolutionary is gone, but at the same time, I don't believe FOR A MINUTE that he *wasn't* "vetted" (such as the process is... ethics waivers and all...). I mean, seriously, that'd be a rather incompetent bunch of security around POTUS.
What I'm afraid of is that POTUS is now trying to cover his tracks by dropping ballast. I hope he doesn't manage to do that.
Posted by: Krista at September 07, 2009 09:30 AM (sUTgZ)
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What is extremely disturbing is the failure of many if not most news organizations to report *anything* about the Van Jones controversy *until he resigned*. Which makes it clear that they are putting their obligations to their viewers/readers...and also (in the case of public corporations and subsidiaries thereof) to their shareholders BEHIND the promotion of the personal political opinions of their employees/executives.
Posted by: david foster at September 07, 2009 05:01 PM (uWlpq)
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What should also be troubling is that this is only one of many. You can bet there are more people in this administration with exactly the same views, just not ones that are as easily demonstrably radical.
Posted by: John at September 07, 2009 10:16 PM (crTpS)
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I don't trust this administration one iota. I don't think there is ANYTHING they can do to change that position...
Posted by: Miss Ladybug at September 07, 2009 10:40 PM (paOhf)
5they are putting their obligations to their viewers/readers...and also
(in the case of public corporations and subsidiaries thereof) to their
shareholders BEHIND the promotion of the personal political opinions of
their employees/executives.
david, you assume that "obligations" and "personal political opinions" are mutually exclusive. On the contrary, it is in the public's best interest to shield them from the truth about herOes like Van Jones (Barack bless him) until they are ready. It is still too early to expect the victims of the Bush regime to accept someone who knows the truth about 9/11.
Andy McCarthy (ugh, that name - 50s flashbacks!) and Krista are right. President Obama is not Mr. Magoo. Only Europpressors are blind. Great Leaders can recognize herOism when they see it. Van Jones was vetted. He passed with flying red colors.
John is also right. The forces of eeeevil may have struck down one herO of the peOple, but other nObles are still on their thrones to serve the greater gOOd.
We Great Leaders must be careful. You guys are starting to look under the red curtain. Why can't you close your eyes and dream of unicOrns?
Posted by: kevin at September 08, 2009 12:31 AM (h9KHg)
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Kevin, that last paragraph is just... PRICELESS. ;-)
Posted by: Krista at September 08, 2009 10:23 AM (sUTgZ)
I read the EJ Dionne opinion piece in my parents' fishwrap and thought blah blah blah and then forgot about it.
There is an overwhelming case that the electronic media went out of their way to cover the noise and ignored the calmer (and from television's point of view boring) encounters between elected representatives and their constituents.
But later I remembered it and connected it to a graph I saw at The Corner:
EJ Dionne's core beef is probably the same as mine: that whatever the media reports is whatever becomes important. Ignore Iraq and Afghanistan altogether and the public quickly forgets it and thinks things are going fine or winding down. Ramp up talks on health care and that skyrockets.
The number of news stories people read or hear on an issue shapes how important they think it is. The media has so much power in this realm. They frame most debates and set the order of importance for national issues.
Oh, but wait, that's not the generic conclusion EJ Dionne came to...
But the only citizens who commanded widespread media coverage last month were the right-wingers. And I bet you thought the media were “liberal.â€
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Sarah, you might be interested in this piece by Political Philosopher Patrick Deneen at Georgetown University.
http://patrickdeneen.blogspot.com/2009/08/news-from-nowhere.html
He talks of the death of the local, full-time, professional journalist and what impact that has. . . . I won't do the article justice in a sentence or two, but it also relevant to your point today that what is focused on in the news, translates as 'important' in the public mind. When there are fewer and fewer actual reporters keeping an eye on things, that gives greater scope for nefarious manipulation. . . .
Posted by: queenie at September 05, 2009 01:14 PM (p4Pp0)
This is why people are fed up these days. Our politicians are dimwits who cuss at and belittle their constituents when asked simple questions of fact.
People are straight-up tired of pompous politicians, jerks who think they're better than us because they appropriate our money to fly around on fancy jets.
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This video was infuriating. I didn't find the interviewer's questions offensive in any way. They were the same type of questions I would have asked. The arrogance Stark displayed was hard to fathom. I hope this goes viral and costs him his seat. He deserves it.
Posted by: Amy at September 03, 2009 11:09 AM (9fDOS)
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Oh for the love of all that is holy... INFURIATING.
What a pompous douche. And he's ALWAYS been a pompous douche, too (I lived in his district at one time).
Oh, and his degree isn't in economics, either. So perhaps instead of attacking someone else's ability to question, he should find someone who fits his apparent definition of who is allowed to explain.
And finally - Stark actually called a military member who had written him a letter critical of his vote on Iraq and left this message for him:
Dan, this is Congressman Pete Stark, and I just got your fax. And you
don't know what you're talking about. So if you care about enlisted
people, you wouldn't have voted for that thing either. But probably
somebody put you up to this, and I'm not sure who it was, but I doubt
if you could spell half the words in the letter, and somebody wrote it
for you. So I don't pay much attention to it. But I'll call you back
later and let you tell me more about why you think you're such a great
goddamn hero and why you think that this generals [sic] and the Defense
Department, who forced these poor enlisted guys to do what they did,
shouldn't be held to account. That's the issue. So if you want to stick
it to a bunch of enlisted guys, have your way. But if you want to get
to the bottom of people who forced this awful program in Iraq, then you
should understand more about it than you obviously do. Thanks
And yet he continually gets re-elected. By enormous margins.
Posted by: airforcewife at September 03, 2009 11:37 AM (CDkfD)
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Holy moly, I can not believe that message he left...wowzers...
Posted by: CaliValleyGirl at September 03, 2009 12:51 PM (irIko)
4People are straight-up tired of pompous politicians
"People"? You mean the millions who elected Obama and who will vote for us socialists forever? The masses who will never regret keeping St. Ted (Barack bless him) in office for decades?
jerks who think they're better than us
We are better. We have power. We love it, and aren't afraid to (ab)use it. Might makes right! (With a small r, of course.)
People love the powerful. They want dynasties - Kennedys and Obamas.
"5 point pledge"? How about a five-year plan?
The more we borrow, the richer we are...seriously?
Seriously. The richer he is. The richer we the elites are! We cannot create, only legislate ... confiscate. Take. "Borrow" is just a prettier way of putting it.
We can do anything and you cannot stop us. When Omerica collapses, we will just flee to some Eurabian resort.
And yet he continually gets re-elected. By enormous margins.
Just like other Great Leaders. If it weren't for Republican wreckers, results would look more like these from the DPRK:
The election committee also stated that 99.98% of all registered voters took part in voting, with 100% voting for their candidate in each district. All seats were won by the Democratic Front for the Reunification of the Fatherland, under the control of the Worker's Party.
Soon you will all vOte the prOper way.
Posted by: kevin at September 03, 2009 01:02 PM (+nV09)
Posted by: Pamela at September 03, 2009 01:26 PM (H2JBc)
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This totally reminded me of the commercial where the guy brags about all the stuff he's got, all the spending he's doing and how wealthy a life he is living. Then he asks, "How do I do it? Oh, I'm in debt up to my eyeballs" Classic. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hn5EP9StlVA
Posted by: bdol78 at September 03, 2009 01:32 PM (W3XUk)
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There aren't really words to express my opinion of this man's arrogance...
Posted by: Miss Ladybug at September 03, 2009 09:42 PM (paOhf)
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I don't need a degree in proctology to determine that Pete Stark is an A-hole.
Posted by: Susan at September 03, 2009 11:38 PM (Y8ZGj)
He must by why California is collapsing under the weight of its debt so very very prosperous and wealthy!
Posted by: Deltasierra at September 04, 2009 04:48 PM (ccqq6)
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Not just California, Deltasierra, but all of Omerica (emphasis ours)!
America's public debt is already 55% of GDP, twice
its share in the '80s, and the US budget deficit is expected to hit
$1.6 trillion this year and a further $9 trillion by 2019. If what we
are witnessing is not somehow reversed, the dollar will collapse
exactly the way of the Russian ruble, the Thai baht and the Malaysian
ringgit did last decade, in response to their governments' fiscal
derelictions. The only difference will be that a traumatized dollar
will take with it America's geopolitical sway.
Who needs that? We'll be rich!
Posted by: kevin at September 08, 2009 12:36 AM (h9KHg)
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So rich that we won't have to worry about rising unemployment. Enjoy your coming funemployment! Sure, Pete Stark isn't too smOOth, but trust him. He graduated from MIT (Chomsky Central!) and Berkeley. He is smart. He is a Great Leader. Follow him to utOpia! If you were him and saw guys like Jan whathisname being skeptical about the prOgram for prOsperity, you'd get angry too.
Posted by: kevin at September 08, 2009 12:27 PM (+nV09)
I envision an ugly future. Despite the fact that I have joked with my mother that I was born during the Carter administration and everything turned out OK, I worry. I see my child being born into an America I can't even recognize.
I find myself channeling my inner Sarah Connor lately.
I used to think that we were living Atlas Shrugged. But lately, I think we're seeing a different ending. I don't see the politicians kidnapping Galt and asking him to fix it fix it fix it; I think they want the broken system.
I don't know how to live in a broken system. I feel like I need to spend some time learning how.
And even the plains aren't enough to calm my soul.
1
I think your answer lies in key words in your post: "my child"(grand words to see you write by the way). When we can afford people to have great intentions while not being held accountable for results, freedoms erode. When we can't afford it, our country's citizens don't roll over. They wake up and fight, through educating themselves and others, and ultimately through the ballot box. I have optimism because people, like you, are willing to fight hard for what is fundamentally important to them.
Posted by: HChambers at September 02, 2009 11:17 AM (v5r7Y)
I share your worries. I try to comfort myself by remembering some history...in the dark days of the Depression, many believed the only question was whether America would go Fascist or it would go Communist. In the Cold War era, global thermonuclear war seemed like a real possibility. Yet we came through these things okay.
I'm not sure I believe myself, though. I'm concerned that something very bad may have happened to the American spirit.
Posted by: david foster at September 02, 2009 05:09 PM (uWlpq)
3
"channeling my inner Sarah Connor" -- heehee
There's a reason why our son's middle name is "Connor." Oh, yes, that is his namesake...
I agree, it's wonderful to see those words, "my child."
4
the DH and I (who are much older than you and your DH) were just saying the other day that for the first time in our adult lives we are not only afraid FOR our country, but we are afraid OF our government. we worry more than we ever have not only for our children, but so much more for our grandchild (who is your child's contemporary)... and those are the scariest thoughts for us outside our own mortality. I used to think the survivalists were "fringe"... now? sarah connor indeed.
5
There seems to be a lot of this going around. I have a great sense of unease about the future. If the sh*t does hit the fan, I am not prepared to deal with it, nor is my immediate family. Can we get The Gulch up and running somewhere, soon?
Posted by: Miss Ladybug at September 02, 2009 11:37 PM (paOhf)
6
Of course the politicians want a broken system. It creates crises that can only be 'solved' by more government - meaning more reelections. Disasters keep them in power. It's the broken window fallacy on a national level. Leaders break windows and the masses applaud regardless of not-so-hidden costs.
Posted by: Amritas at September 03, 2009 01:41 AM (h9KHg)
7
This is why I would have named a blog surrealities if I had started one several years ago. Now it is scary and surreal and I didn't name my blog that because it is too close now. I knew he was going to be bad, I just didn't know how quickly he could act and get so much done to ruin the country.
Posted by: Ruth H at September 03, 2009 12:53 PM (KLwh4)
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There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state with another, nothing more. He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness. We must have felt what it is to die, Morrel, that we may appreciate the enjoyments of living. --The Count of Monte Cristo--
While our troops go out to defend our country, it is incumbent upon us to make the country worth defending. --Deskmerc--
Contrary to what you've just seen, war is neither glamorous nor fun. There are no winners, only losers. There are no good wars, with the following exceptions: The American Revolution, WWII, and the Star Wars Trilogy. --Bart Simpson--
If you want to be a peacemaker, you've gotta learn to kick ass. --Sheriff of East Houston, Superman II--
Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without an accordion. You just leave a lot of useless noisy baggage behind. --Jed Babbin--
Dante once said that the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in a period of moral crisis maintain their neutrality. --President John F. Kennedy--
War is a bloody, killing business. You've got to spill their blood, or they will spill yours. --General Patton--
We've gotta keep our heads until this peace craze blows over. --Full Metal Jacket--
Those who threaten us and kill innocents around the world do not need to be treated more sensitively. They need to be destroyed. --Dick Cheney--
The Flag has to come first if freedom is to survive. --Col Steven Arrington--
The purpose of diplomacy isn't to make us feel good about Eurocentric diplomatic skills, and having countries from the axis of chocolate tie our shoelaces together does nothing to advance our infantry. --Sir George--
I just don't care about the criticism I receive every day, because I know the cause I defend is right. --Oriol--
It's days like this when we're reminded that freedom isn't free. --Chaplain Jacob--
Bumper stickers aren't going to accomplish some of the missions this country is going to face. --David Smith--
The success of multilateralism is measured not merely by following a process, but by achieving results. --President Bush--
Live and act within the limit of your knowledge and keep expanding it to the limit of your life.
--John Galt--
First, go buy a six pack and swig it all down. Then, watch Ace Ventura. And after that, buy a Hard Rock Cafe shirt and come talk to me. You really need to lighten up, man.
--Sminklemeyer--
You've got to kill people, and when you've killed enough they stop fighting --General Curtis Lemay--
If we wish to be free, if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we have been so long contending, if we mean not basely to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon until the glorious object of our contest shall be obtained -- we must fight! --Patrick Henry--
America has never been united by blood or birth or soil. We are bound by ideals that move us beyond our backgrounds, lift us above our interests and teach us what it means to be citizens. Every child must be taught these principles. Every citizen must uphold them. And every immigrant, by embracing these ideals, makes our country more, not less, American. --President George W. Bush--
are usually just cheerleading sessions, full of sound and fury and signifying nothing but a soothing reduction in blood pressure brought about by the narcotic high of being agreed with. --Bill Whittle
War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.
--John Stuart Mill--
We are determined that before the sun sets on this terrible struggle, our flag will be recognized throughout the world as a symbol of freedom on the one hand and of overwhelming force on the other. --General George Marshall--
We can continue to try and clean up the gutters all over the world and spend all of our resources looking at just the dirty spots and trying to make them clean. Or we can lift our eyes up and look into the skies and move forward in an evolutionary way.
--Buzz Aldrin--
America is the greatest, freest and most decent society in existence. It is an oasis of goodness in a desert of cynicism and barbarism. This country, once an experiment unique in the world, is now the last best hope for the world.
--Dinesh D'Souza--
Recent anti-Israel protests remind us again of our era's peculiar alliance: the most violent, intolerant, militantly religious movement in modern times has the peace movement on its side. --James Lileks--
As a wise man once said: we will pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.
Unless the price is too high, the burden too great, the hardship too hard, the friend acts disproportionately, and the foe fights back. In which case, we need a timetable.
--James Lileks--
I am not willing to kill a man so that he will agree with my faith, but I am prepared to kill a man so that he cannot force my compatriots to submit to his.
--Froggy--
You can say what you want about President Bush; but the truth is that he can take a punch. The man has taken a swift kick in the crotch for breakfast every day for 6 years and he keeps getting up with a smile in his heart and a sense of swift determination to see the job through to the best of his abilties.
--Varifrank--
In a perfect world, We'd live in peace and love and harmony with each oither and the world, but then, in a perfect world, Yoko would have taken the bullet.
--SarahBellum--
Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free. --Ronald Reagan--
America is rather like life. You can usually find in it what you look for. It will probably be interesting, and it is sure to be large. --E.M. Forster--
Do not fear the enemy, for your enemy can only take your life. It is far better that you fear the media, for they will steal your HONOR. That awful power, the public opinion of a nation, is created in America by a horde of ignorant, self-complacent simpletons who failed at ditching and shoemaking and fetched up in journalism on their way to the poorhouse. --Mark Twain--
The Enlightenment was followed by the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars, which touched every European state, sparked vicious guerrilla conflicts across the Continent and killed millions. Then, things really turned ugly after the invention of soccer. --Iowahawk--
Every time I meet an Iraqi Army Soldier or Policeman that I haven't met before, I shake his hand and thank him for his service. Many times I am thanked for being here and helping his country. I always tell them that free people help each other and that those that truly value freedom help those seeking it no matter the cost. --Jack Army--
Right, left - the terms are useless nowadays anyway. There are statists, and there are individualists. There are pessimists, and optimists. There are people who look backwards and trust in the West, and those who look forward and trust in The World. Those are the continuums that seem to matter the most right now. --Lileks--
The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.
--Winston Churchill--
A man or a nation is not placed upon this earth to do merely what is pleasant and what is profitable. It is often called upon to carry out what is both unpleasant and unprofitable, but if it is obviously right it is mere shirking not to undertake it. --Arthur Conan Doyle--
A man who has nothing which he cares about more than he does about his personal safety is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the existing of better men than himself. --John Stuart Mill--
After the attacks on September 11, 2001, most of the sheep, that is, most citizens in America said, "Thank God I wasn't on one of those planes." The sheepdogs, the warriors, said, "Dear God, I wish I could have been on one of those planes. Maybe I could have made a difference." --Dave Grossman--
At heart I’m a cowboy; my attitude is if they’re not going to stand up and fight for what they believe in then they can go pound sand. --Bill Whittle--
A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship. --Alexander Tyler--
By that time a village half-wit could see what generations of professors had pretended not to notice. --Atlas Shrugged--
I kept asking Clarence why our world seemed to be collapsing and everything seemed so shitty. And he'd say, "That's the way it goes, but don't forget, it goes the other way too." --Alabama Worley--
So Bush is history, and we have a new president who promises to heal the planet, and yet the jihadists don’t seem to have got the Obama message that there are no enemies, just friends we haven’t yet held talks without preconditions with.
--Mark Steyn--
"I had started alone in this journey called life, people started
gathering up on the way, and the caravan got bigger everyday." --Urdu couplet
The book and the sword are the two things that control the world. We either gonna control them through knowledge and influence their minds, or we gonna bring the sword and take their heads off. --RZA--
It's a daily game of public Frogger, hopping frantically to avoid being crushed under the weight of your own narcissism, banality, and plain old stupidity. --Mary Katharine Ham--
There are more instances of the abridgment of freedoms
of the people by gradual and silent encroachment of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations. --James Madison--
It is in the heat of emotion that good people must remember to stand on principle. --Larry Elder--
Please show this to the president and ask him to remember the wishes of the forgotten man, that is, the one who dared to vote against him. We expect to be tramped on but we do wish the stepping would be a little less hard. --from a letter to Eleanor Roosevelt--
The world economy depends every day on some engineer, farmer, architect, radiator shop owner, truck driver or plumber getting up at 5AM, going to work, toiling hard, and producing real wealth so that an array of bureaucrats, regulators, and redistributors can manage the proper allotment of much of the natural largess produced. --VDH--
Parents are often so busy with the physical rearing of children that they miss the glory of parenthood, just as the grandeur of the trees is lost when raking leaves. --Marcelene Cox--