Words Like Locusts Flew From Her Fingers

Fool Me Once, Shame on You. Fool Me Twice…

Cheney Accuses Iraq Critics of Shameless Revisionism
Kerry added: “The vice president continued to mislead America today by saying Congress saw and heard the same intelligence the White House did. We did not.”

Yeah. But here’s the thing. Even if Congress did see the same intelligence the White House saw (and I have no way of knowing), it’s really kind of irrelevant at this point. What matters is that NOW we know the “intelligence” was wrong. NOW we know there were no weapons of mass destruction. NOW we know Saddam was really never a threat to us. NOW we know that our continued presence in Iraq is mainly serving to further destabilize that area. So, for the sake of argument, let’s just assume that everyone in the government had bad information. Now that we realize the info was bad, what are we going to do about it? Are we going to just continue on the same course of action — even though we know it no longer makes any sense? Or are we going to cut our losses, admit we’ve made some mistakes, and turn things around?

Update for Friends of Riley

Those of you who are regular readers will remember the story of little Riley, whose foster parents have been fighting bigotry within our legal system as they’ve attempted to finalize his adoption. I’m hoping some of you have contributed to Riley’s legal fund. You can read all about how to donate on his web site, Friends of Riley – An Adoption Nightmare.

Riley’s moms recently emailed an update and they’ve given me permission to post it here.

Greetings Friends, Family & Friends we haven’t met yet,

We are writing today for two reasons; first, despite the brutal discrimination against our family by the court, we have recently made exciting progress in Riley’s adoption case and wanted to update everyone! And second because we have incurred unexpected legal expenses recently that are required to complete our adoption and we must find a way to raise those funds. We are hoping that each of you will liberally forward Riley’s story and website http://www.friendsofriley.org to friends, family, coworkers, elists and supportive organizations to gain their support.

We are providing a very condensed version of Riley’s story here for those that haven’t heard it. For those of you that are familiar with his story, an update follows below. To view family photos and for a detailed description of the discrimination faced by Riley’s family please visit Friends of Riley – An Adoption Nightmare. You can also feel free to place a link to his site on your own site. Thank you all so much for your support. We couldn’t have made it through this without you! And we ARE almost through this!

Riley’s Story

After raising our son from birth to 11 months old, we were asked by his biological parents to adopt him. We agreed to enter into an open adoption, where they could both be a part of his life. When he was fourteen months old, we learned that his biological mother’s ex-husband (no biological relation to our son) did not want Riley to be adopted by lesbians so he illegally fought in court to obtain custody of our son and won.

Unfortunately for our son, the judge and Guardian ad Litem that were appointed to his case, shared the ex-husband’s religious and social views about children being raised by gay parents. As a result, despite the law being in favor of our adoption, the court ordered that Riley had to spend a substantial amount of time in this man’s home, while we fought at the higher court.

Update

Riley is now coming up on 2 & 1/2 years old. For half of his young life he has been forced to spend time in the home of an unrelated man, despite his objection through tears, pleading and begging not to be pulled out of his mothers arms each time he is dropped off. This situation has been devastating for our son and has detrimentally affected his life. And yet, we had no choice but to cooperate with the court’s order.

Thankfully the WI Court of Appeals and the WI Supreme Court both ruled in our favor!

After a long hard struggle to get where we are today, we finally believe that the end of Riley being separated from his family for extended periods of time, is in sight!

First our really great news; over the last couple of months the court has replaced both the judge and the Guardian ad Litem who were clearly discriminating against our family.

Second, we go to court on December 16 and expect to have our son come home full-time on that day (his time is currently split week to week between our home and the ex-husband’s home).

We expect to obtain our adoptive placement on Dec 16 and be on the road to a final adoption very soon!

Despite our confidence that Riley will come home full-time that day, the ex-husband has been very clear that he intends to appeal the circuit court’s decision. We have tapped every resource imaginable and continue to struggle to pay the nearly $55,000.00 in legal bills that we have acquired. We are painfully aware that another appeal will cause those numbers to rise rapidly. Without the support of people outside our family, we have no idea how we will manage his legal bills and unless we find a way to mange them, we cannot finalize our adoption.

We have dedicated our lives to being there for children that have no parents. We currently have seven children (though our numbers fluctuate). Every penny of our already lower than average income goes to the care of our children. However, currently a full half of our income is spent each month on Riley’s legal bills. This added expense has had a substantial impact on our family. We are struggling. We are reaching out for support because we can see no other way.

Last week we received a $1600.00 bill from the adoption agency that we were not expecting. We are hoping through this email request to at least get that paid off by January, when it is due. We simply cannot foresee coming up with any extra money to get that bill paid and yet it needs to be paid to complete our adoption. Thus our current request for donations.

We are ever grateful to everyone who has contributed to our legal fund for Riley. We have acknowledged each of you (by placing your initials and state and the amount contributed) on Riley’s site, Thanks to Those Who Have Contributed. We know that the average family cannot afford to contribute. And to them we extend our gratitude for their prayers and thoughts, for which we are just as grateful! We know that many of those who sent contributions took the funds from their own family’s budget. We cannot express how much we appreciate your help. Riley deserves to have his family intact and your help has made that happen for him! Thank you, thank you, a million times, thank you!

We are hoping that each one of you will take the time to send Riley’s story and website http://www.friendsofriley.org/ to your friends, family, coworkers and supportive organizations.

Should you be able to contribute to his legal fund you can send payments to:

Riley’s Legal Fund
PO Box 844
Menomonie, WI 54751

Checks can be made payable to: “Riley’s Legal Fund”

Paypal credit card donations can be made under the email address: helpingriley@friendsofriley.org at www.paypal.com

Should you be able to hold a fundraiser at your church, community event or through your organization please contact Melissa at nurturehrt@aol.com.

We are eternally grateful to three members of our church, Chuck Barnard, Dennis Spader and Lynn Hausman, for spearheading the fundraising efforts on Riley’s behalf. They have set up the legal fund, PO box and website, manage all incoming and outgoing funds and do monthly bookkeeping. We are equally grateful to the lawyers that have handled our case, Carol Gapen and Stella Pagonis, who have worked countless hours to bring our son home. This has been a long hard battle but in the end our son will be home and secure with the family that he needs and trusts.

Thank you all again for your support, prayers and contributions. Knowing that we have people behind us has kept us afloat through this nightmare. We love our son very much and long to tuck him into bed every night, kiss every owie and celebrate every holiday with him from here on out. Your support, prayers and contributions are bringing that hope into reality. THANK YOU!

We will update everyone after we go to court in a few weeks. Please keep us in your thoughts and prayers.

Love & Blessings,
Melissa, Mandy & Riley
Nicole, Bethany, Doug, KJ, Christian, Kelan
all our extended family & friends
and equally important, Riley’s biological parents, Scott & Lisa, who have tirelessly fought to keep Riley with his family

Make a donation if you can, okay?

The Blight of McMansions

Taste for Space Is Spawning Mansions Fit for a Commoner
As the Psihases saw it, moving into a bigger house was not something to be questioned, but something to be accepted, an axiom of American life. “Bigger bigger, better better,” Georgia Psihas said. “It’s just a part of life.”

People are such idiots.

It’s true that the “value” of houses in northern Virginia has gone up at an amazing rate. Townhouses in our neighborhood are now selling for almost three times what we paid only 8 1/2 years ago. We took out a 15-year mortgage when we bought our place, too, so we’ve got a LOT of equity built up. Many people in our situation have cashed in their smaller, older houses and bought bigger, more expensive places. They’re pretty much all idiots — contributing to the sprawl that’s turned northern Virginia into a nightmarish tangle of housing developments, look-alike faux “village centers”, and bumper-to-bumper traffic. These people buy more house than they need (and, often, more than they can afford to furnish) at inflated prices. Fools.

Mark and I agree that, at about 2400 finished square feet, we really have quite a bit more house than we actually need. We almost never use the family room in the basement, the dining room, or the upstairs bedroom that’s been turned into Mark’s model train room. We don’t want a bigger house. And we certainly don’t want to tack another 15 or 30 years onto the period of time we’ll be paying a mortgage! No, no… That would just be dumb. When Mark retires, we want to be living in a house that’s paid for.

I’ve given a lot of thought to what we really need in a house.

• Do we really need a separate office space for each of us? Do we really need an office at all? These days, Mark and I do most of our computer work on laptops equipped with wireless internet connectivity. As often as not, if we’re working on something where we need to be at a table to spread out paper, we’ll do it in the dining room. The office space we have is used mainly to store supplies and paperwork. We don’t really need a whole room for that purpose. Intelligently placed cabinets or storage closets would work just as well — maybe even better. A nice big table, centrally located in a part of the house where people actually want to be could serve many purposes — desk space, a place for working on crafts or other projects, dining space when company comes. This idea works for me.
• How big does a bathroom really need to be? Mark and I sometimes tour model homes, just for the heck of it and to see what people are building and how they’re decorating, and most of the new houses being built have enormous bathrooms! I think that’s a ridiculous waste of space. How much time do you really spend in the bathroom, anyway? (I suppose people who are really into wearing make-up and such spend more time than others, but still…) It’s a bathroom, for Pete’s sake. It pretty much just needs to be functional.
• The same is true of master bedrooms. It’s crazy! What do you do in there, anyway?? Most people just watch TV for a while in the evening and then go to sleep. How much space do you really need for that?!?
• Another thing I’ve been thinking about is kitchen cabinets. I’ve decided they’re pretty much a complete waste of money but most people are stuck using them because of how their houses were designed. Here’s what makes more sense: a large pantry with enough low-cost open shelving to hold all of your food, pots and pans, and dishes. Not only does such an arrangement make it a whole lot easier to see what you’ve got and to find things, if you’ve got enough space you can buy some things in bulk and save money. I’ve decided that if/when we build our own house, this is the way I’m going to go. If you’re not paying for a bunch of furniture grade cabinetry, you can use that money for …oh, I don’t know… maybe a really nice stained glass window. Or marble countertops. (I’m told marble countertops are very nice to have if you do a lot of baking.) The point is, you’ve got to think hard about the purpose of a thing. Cabinets=storage. What qualities do you want in a storage thing? It’s got to be sturdy. It’s got to hide the stuff being stored. It should be reasonably attractive. You can get a LOT more good storage for the money if you use a pantry with sturdy open shelves and put an attractive door on the thing.
• There are actually a couple of things I’d add to our “dream house”. First, a mud room or entry porch of some kind. I’m envisioning a space where everyone entering the house could sit down to remove their shoes and put on some comfy slippers. (I really like the idea of people not wearing their outdoor shoes inside the house. I just haven’t put it into practice yet.) In a cold climate, this room would have a heavy door separating it from the rest of the house, too, so you’d never be letting very cold air from outside directly into the house.
• The other thing I’d add is a laundry room on the same floor where the bedrooms are. The laundry room would have a window. And a closet with shelves for holding cleaning supplies and space for a vacuum cleaner. And it would have countertops for folding laundry. And a big deep sink. Our current laundry room is in the basement and our bedrooms are on the second floor. It’s crazy to have to haul laundry up and down two flights of stairs. Makes no sense. Bad design.

So… what this all leaves me with is a house with lots and lots of closets with shelves for storage. One master bedroom and master bathroom. Neither of them big. One guest room, small. One guest bath which could also double as a “powder room”. One big room with sofas, chairs, and a big table (with chairs) that could be used for dining — or whatever. That laundry room I just talked about. And a small kitchen with a big pantry.

I truly can’t see why a couple like us would need anything more — and we could probably easily fit it all in about 1500 square feet or less.

Murtha’s No Fool

House Rejects Iraq Pullout After GOP Forces a Vote
GOP leaders hastily scheduled a vote on a measure to require the Bush administration to bring the troops home now, an idea proposed Thursday by Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.). The Republican-proposed measure was rejected 403 to 3, a result that surprised no one.

Well, of course not. An immediate withdrawal from Iraq would almost certainly result in civil war there.

The idea was to force Democrats to go on the record on a proposal that the administration says would be equivalent to surrender.

This, though, makes no sense to me. Surrender?? Surrender to whom? Our presence in Iraq has so destabilized that country there’s no one left to surrender to, for Pete’s sake! What’s that you say?? The insurgents would win if we were to leave? Heh, yeah… they’d “win” alright — and what a pyrrhic victory that would be. If it wouldn’t be such a cruelty to the majority of Iraqis who have no interest in a civil war, I’d say let the insurgents have their “victory”.

Representative Murtha’s no fool — and he’s absolutely no coward (and shame on those who have called him one.) He knows we can’t just up and leave Iraq without some kind of plan in place for how the Iraqis are going to run their country. Murtha’s just frustrated — as are many of us — by the Bush administration’s inability to come up with any sort of actual timetable for ending this ill-conceived war.

When Robots Attack!

How to Survive a Robot Uprising

Arlington, Va.:
Who would win a fight, a robot or a zombie reanimated by nanobots?

Daniel H. Wilson: ROBOT VS. ROBOT ZOMBIE: WHO WOULD WIN IN A FIGHT? Well, “robot” is vague. Are we talking a skyscraper-sized behemoth with thousands of whipping, shredding razor-wire arms?

The Washington Post’s got a great Q&A session online with Daniel H. Wilson, the author of How to Survive a Robot Uprising: Tips on Defending Yourself Against the Coming Rebellion. As many of you know, this sort of thing is, as we say, right up my alley. Not only am I supremely well-equipped to survive an apocalyptic event of pretty much any kind, BUT I also happen to know a thing or two about robots, computers, and philosophical zombies– which would be very handy if it ever became necessary to separate the real humans from the evil robots masquerading as humans. Sure, it’s been a few years since I did any programming in assembly language — but I could pick it up again in an emergency! — enough to bring an end to the coming robotic reign of terror, at least.

Ah… it’s good to have useful skills.

Seriously, you’ve got to read this Q&A — it’s great.

Suicide as Protest

Powell’s Books – Review-a-Day – Calming the Fearful Mind: A Zen Response to Terrorism by Thich Nhat Hanh, reviewed by Salon.com
One wonders whether Hanh today retains his admiration for those who immolated themselves in the ’60s. There were certainly many Westerners, like Berrigan, who shared this admiration, but ultimately self-immolation, like suicide bombing, horrified and alienated more people than it impressed. For most Americans, the willingness of suicide protestors to die did not testify to their sincerity; rather, it placed them beyond the pale of rational discussion, tarring their entire cultures with a suspicion of brutality and disregard for life. In both Vietnam and the Middle East, the imagery of the suicide protest — the flaming monk in the lotus position, the bomber’s head in the roadway — was incorporated into a darkly Orientalist vision of an incomprehensibly alien culture. The suicide protest, as Hanh notes of self-immolation, is always a form of communication; but it is a form of communication that causes most of its audience to deliberately refuse to listen, deeply or otherwise.

Precisely.

I’ve mentioned before how much I enjoy a well-written book review because it tells you as much about the author of the review as it does about the book. This review by salon.com’s Matt Steinglass is one of those good reviews.

I suspect that Thich Nhat Hanh doesn’t spend a lot of ink writing about protest suicides but, let’s be honest, the act does grab a person’s attention, doesn’t it? Could anyone who’s ever seen that famous photograph of the Buddhist monk in flames forget it?

Steinglass is right when he says these protest suicides didn’t persuade Westerners to listen deeply. There’s another reason, though, for why they were a bad idea and that he apparently doesn’t recognize it tells me a lot abbout Thich Nhat Hanh. Ultimately, suicide is a self centered act. I can’t help but believe these spectacular self-immolations were carried out by people who really weren’t very good Buddhists. Steinglass quotes Hanh, “True love doesn’t destroy the object of its love.” Doesn’t Buddhism teach true love for all creation? Protest suicde was (and is) a betrayal of that principle.

Okay, so… a whole lot of words to talk about things that happened 40 years ago. There are still a lot of people who have some misplaced admiration for this sort of thing, though. I think it’s worthwhile to remind them that there’s nothing noble in taking a life — even if the life is their own. As I said earlier, it’s ultimately a self centered act.

List 3

It’s not like I don’t have strong opinions about things. You all know that. It’s just that I’m tired of ranting about the same stuff over and over. Just as those of you who are regular readers are probably tired of reading the same rants over and over.

George W. Bush — asshole. Check.
Arctic National Wildlife Refuge — protect it. Check.
Torture — always bad. Got it.
Gay marriage — totally okay. Yup.
Gall bladder — gone. Ho-hum.

So…. until my imagination fires up again (and hopefully that won’t take too long… maybe I need more coffee?), I figured I’d just list the songs of List 3 that I was enjoying on my iPod during treadmill time at the gym this afternoon. A person’s gym-music choices are, perhaps, revealing. Or not. Whatever. So here’s List 3

• Tangerine Dream – Love on a R
• Talking Heads – Psycho Killer
• Talking Heads – Burning Down the House
• Steely Dan – Cousin Dupree
• Steely Dan – Rikki Don’t Lose That Number
• Rolling Stones – Waiting on a Friend
• Rolling Stones – Satisfaction
• Kinks – My Sharona
• ZZ Top – Sharp Dressed Man
• Fleetwood Mac – Hypnotized
• Fleetwood Mac – Landslide
• Memories of Green – Vangelis

This is 53 minutes of music and presumes 45 minutes on the treadmill, not including the cool-down time. Memories of Green from the movie “Blade Runner” (my personal favorite) happens during cool-down — which works out great because it’s a very mellow tune. Satisfaction and My Sharona happen about 30 minutes in when, theoretically, a person should be really moving. It’s not a GREAT playlist — it’s a little too mellow in the middle — but it works pretty well for a 45 minute treadmill experience.

I only started back to the gym again late last week and it’s been interesting to see how weak I became while I was sick. Argh. It’s almost like starting over from scratch — gym-wise.

Oh well. Fascinating as this all is, I’m sure anyone who’s continued reading this far must be anxiously looking around the room, trying to find something — anything — else they can do with their time. So… that’s List 3.

Blood and Guts

Okay, so this is going to interest only a very few of you. It’s a series of photos showing laparoscopic removal of a gall bladder. This guy’s whole section on the gall bladder is really pretty well done.
PicTour of a Laparoscopic Operation

Bat Watching

Vagablog: The Braggs Drop Out and Hit the Road – (washingtonpost.com)
Though we can’t see them at first, we can hear hundreds of thousands of them squeaking to each other and the breeze’s changing direction often brings further odiferous evidence of their considerable presence.

The Braggs are writing today about watching Mexican free-tail bats — and that reminded me of my own recent bat watching experience.

This past summer when Mark and I were at “bear camp” in Ely, Minnesota we took a little field trip one evening with our fellow bear students to the nearby Soudan iron ore mine to watch the short-ear and little brown bats emerge.

Let me just set up the scene for you: There are two main sites to the Soudan mine separated by a flat grassy area about 75 yards wide. On one side is the old open pit site — a deep ravine filled with trees. On the other side is a shaft to the underground mine (half a mile deep!). The bats hang out in the underground mine shaft during the day. At dusk they fly out and cross over to the ravine.

We arrived at dusk. Looking down into the underground mine shaft, you could see the bats beginning to fly around. They’d sort of swirl around about 20 feet down in shaft, occasionally coming up closer to the surface, then dipping back down into the shaft again. Eventually some of them started flying up and out of the shaft. Since having a bat fly into your face is probably unpleasant, we decided to move away from the shaft. We sat on a nearby bench and watched as the bats began emerging from the shaft.

Now here’s the really cool and horrible part. The local merlins (small hawks) are also aware of the nightly bat flight and a couple of them took up positions at the tops of nearby pine trees. The bats would emerge from the mine shaft one or two at a time and fly fast and low towards the ravine and, zoom!, down would come the merlins — zigging and zagging at amazing speeds right in front of us! I’m talking like 5 or 7 feet in front of us!! Wow! Just while we watched, the two merlins caught probably 6 or 7 bats. They’d fly off with them and quickly deposit the bats somewhere (on a sharp tree branch? in a nest full of baby merlins? who knows?) and they’d be back again within 5 minutes — ready to catch more bats. Mmmmmmm! Bats! They’re healthy and delicious!

It was quite something to see, I’m telling you.

There’s Never a Good Enough Reason for Torture, Part 2

Who They Are – The double standard that underlies our torture policies. By David Cole
…the Bush administration’s justification for employing “cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment” against certain individuals expressly turns on the fact that these individuals are foreign nationals held abroad. The coercive-interrogation policy is predicated on a double standard: According to the administration, we can do it to “them” because “they” are different from “us.”

Check out this well-written analysis of the Bush administration’s deeply immoral policies. David Cole is a professor at Georgetown University Law Center — he knows his stuff.

The rights not to be locked up arbitrarily or to be protected from treatment that shocks the conscience are human rights, not privileges of citizenship. We should honor these rights wherever we are acting and on whomever we are acting.