Not doing much today. We went grocery shopping and spent $112. I thought it would be a lot higher actually since we bought so much produce but I guess not. Of course, it’s higher than it has been but what to expect with the American dollar’s value plummeting the way it is.

I don’t want to go off on this or anything but I just want to say that there isn’t a “world food crisis” that is making our food get more expensive. We have a quickly deteriorating dollar and it’s massive amounts of inflation which is causing our food prices to go up. You know that “economic stimulus” money you received from the federal government? Yeah, that’s what happens when they print $600 for every person in the US. The dollar falls like a rock.

And what is this about the “food crisis” being caused by the emerging middle class in India and China being able to eat meat, eggs, and milk? One of Israel’s friends said, “Wait, 60% of Americans are overweight and it’s China and India’s fault because their poor can now eat meat and drink milk?”

Yup. It’s not that we should just stop buying pop-tarts and start vegetable gardens. No, no, no. The rest of the world should stay down so we can stay up. Seems totally fair, after all, we were here first, right?

Glad all the Native Americans didn’t feel that way about us or our forefathers would never had made it through that first winter. ARGH!

Jael’s not feeling well today. She’s been running a really low-grade fever for a couple of days. Not fun. But she’s really cuddly, which is fun so I guess there are trade offs.

Well, Israel is in the kitchen playing with matches, rubbing alcohol, foil, and a glass jar. Not sure what’s up but I think I’d like to be there for the grand finale. See you all later.

I never really knew my grandpa Roger*. He left my grandma Ellen* when my mom was about eight. He lived with another woman Fran*, raising their family. When my mom was about 14, Roger and Ellen were actually divorced. At that time everyone, except Roger kids with Fran, who didn’t know their parents weren’t married, thought he would now marry Fran. Instead he left her for another woman. I don’t remember ever meeting him until he was in the hospital dying of liver failure from alcohol abuse.

Not a great father figure. But, the I learned about his mom, Beatrice*. Whom I’d met once when my sister was graduating high school, when I was about 15. She died a couple of weeks ago, surprising me, since I had forgotten she was alive. I know that sounds horrible, but she had isolated herself from her family completely. She had kicked her daughter, Jane*, out of the house some thirty years ago and hadn’t spoken to her since. Beatrice didn’t even tell her when her brother died. My grandfather, Roger, started sleeping on park benches when he was around 10. So I’m thinking he didn’t have the greatest example of loving parents either.

I was talking to Israel this morning about some of the conversations he has or overhears at work. One of the conversations that he listened to yesterday but refrained from joining was about how tough these guys were because their parents were such bad-asses. One guy bragged that his mom didn’t have to spank them or slap them if they back talked. She would just throw whatever was nearby at their head. Book, full cup of coffee, shoe, whatever. Pitch it at their head.

Another time, when speaking about raising their own children, someone said, “Yeah, you got to beat her ass,” in reference to a daughter. Israel said, “No, we don’t beat our daughter. We spank her. We don’t spank her when we’re angry.” To which this person replied, “You gotta spank her when you’re mad. If you wait until you cool off, you won’t hit her hard enough. You gotta lay into her ass.”

Seriously.

That’s really what was said. “You gotta spank (or beat) when you are angry or you won’t hit hard enough.”

I don’t think people should be allowed to hit their children. I think my husband and I are better than most people (I really do. I’m sorry. We are thinking and they are not. We are learning new things and they are watching Survivor. We are trying to make our world a better place and they are buying new full size SUV’s and complaining about gas prices. Which of us would you rather have around?) and I think we spank correctly. As a punishment and never as a behavior modifier. We don’t spank to make her stop a behavior. We spank her as a consequence to behavior and hope that she will make the right decision to forgo the negative consequence and choose the right behavior. However, I am willing to give that up and find other forms of negative consequences in order to protect every other child out their from their abusive parents.

Because that’s what throwing things at your child’s head is. It’s abuse. I’m not even sorry for saying that. If your parents ever threw something at you in anger, you’ve been abused. If you’ve ever thrown something at your child in anger, you’ve abused. Simple. (I’m not talking a rolled up sock thrown in jest. I’m talking about hard, heavy things that should not be thrown at children. Use some common sense. If it would hurt you if it were thrown at your, it will hurt your child. Duh.)

So, I don’t think Straus’s study as reported in USA Today, is nearly as out of whack as I thought it was when I blogged about it a while back. I now think that since most people who spank are also the kind of people who throw things at their kids, most people who are spanked are going to have weird problems as adults. And the phrase “lay into her ass” has certain sexual overtones that are altogether creepy. So, while I still think USA Today did a shoddy job of reporting and that Straus should not have lumped masochism with risky sexual behavior nor should he have used so small of studies of the high schoolers, I’m not as out right opposed to his findings as I was originally. As I meet more and more people and get to know them and have these conversations with them, I become less and less comfortable with other people being allowed to corporally discipline their children.

Yes, I want special rights for me and my friends. But I am willing to give those up for the well being of ever potentially abused child out there. I’m creative. I can find other ways to discipline and train up my child and any future children we might have. But hundreds of thousands of kids out there won’t get a choice about whether or not they are routinely abused by those who are supposed to be taking care of them and protecting them.

*names have been changed. I’m fine with my name being plastered all over the internet but I don’t know about everyone else.

Not really quite sure where to begin on this one. I’ve honestly not read that many quotes of our Commander and Chief, George W. Bush, so I am surprised and appalled by his obvious and transparent fear mongering. In the following article, I am going to underline some key points and then comment (in red) immediately after. If you wish to read the article in its entirety without comment first, click on the title.

Bush Warns House on Surveillance

WASHINGTON — With the House poised to vote today on electronic surveillance legislation that the White House has said falls far short of its requirements, President Bush warned legislators strongly Thursday morning against passing what he called “a partisan bill that will undermine American security.”

In clear defiance of the White House, (which is a separate and not higher branch of our Federal Government) the proposal from House Democratic leaders would not give retroactive legal protection to the phone companies that helped in the National Security Agency program of warrantless wiretapping. (So they did something illegal or at least unethical, thereby worthy of litigation and now they want protection. Whoops.) Mr. Bush also threatened to veto any such measure, should it reach his desk. (So why do we even bother with the Senate and Congress if the only laws that are going to get passed are the ones the President agrees with. Why don’t we just let him run the whole damn country?) I’m going to interrupt my rantings to include a quote from Represntative John Coyers, Jr. (D-Mich), “At the same time the administration is trying to intimidate the Congress into giving it additional spying power, we find out yet again that it has abused its authority to pry into the lives of law abiding Americans,” Conyers said in a statement.

The Senate last month passed a bill that did provide such protection and also broadened government eavesdropping powers. (That’s great. Just great. I’ll tell you what the government needs more of…eavesdropping powers. Yup. They do not have enough power. Think how much easier Ruby Ridge would have been if they could have just listened to phone conversations and saved the trouble of sending a man up to trick Randy Weaver into breaking the law. I mean, think of the money we will save if we just give the Feds more power.)

Using tough language on a subject on which he has been persistent and unswerving, Mr. Bush warned (or what? He’ll send them to time out?) House members that “they should not leave for Easter recess without getting the Senate bill to my desk.”

He argued that failure to pass the Senate language would make it harder to detect emerging terrorist threats. (I would really like to hear about some of these emerging terrorist threats they’ve detected so far by eavesdropping on whoever the hell they want to. Oh, wait, that’s right. They are probably being held in the secret prisons which are in secret locations where we can do secret stuff to the them. I forgot.)

“Voting for this bill would make our country less safe,” (right…because removing rights from the populace is such a good way to make your people safe…Idiot.) Mr. Bush said. “Congress should stop playing politics with the past and focus on helping us prevent attacks in the future.” (First of all, Congress is not playing politics with the past [maybe they are but the result is not]. They are preventing, ironically, big companies from being shielded from the consequences of their behavior. Second, if Mr. Bush is really so concerned with future terrorist attacks, maybe he should get us the hell out of the Middle East. If we as a country had kept our word after the first Gulf War and removed our troops from Saudi Arabia, Mr. Bin Laden might still be on our side rather than organizing the bloodies terrorist attacks the US has ever seen.)

Democrats have accused the president of fear-mongering, (I have to agree) saying surveillance can be monitored more carefully without losing its effectiveness.

Administration officials say that the Democrats know that the House version would face probable defeat in the Senate. Mr. Bush has threatened, (There we are again with the threatening.) in any case, to veto such language. But House Democratic leaders have shown themselves more ready than in the past for a fight on national security.

Mr. Bush also argued again that the House Democrats’ approach would unfairly expose the phone companies to lawsuits that could potentially be enormously expensive. (HA HA HA HA. Enormously expensive. Not unjust. Not unfair. Not even unkind or mean, but enormously expensive. That’s great. At last the man has revealed that his god is in fact, the dollar bill.)

“House leaders simply adopted the position that class-action trial lawyers are taking in the multibillion law suits they have filed” against the phone companies, he said. This “would undermine the private sector’s willingness to cooperate with the intelligence community, cooperation that is essential to protecting our country from harm.” (Um, not really. I think he’s saying that if this law were passed, the private sector (that being the general populace, I assume) would see it as a precident of not bending over backwards to cooperate with the intelligence community. Why do they need our cooperation when they can just bug our phone. After all, by not cooperating aren’t we just revealing that we have something to hide, therefore giving them reasonable suspicion that we might be terrorists? And of course, that cooperation is ESSENTIAL to protecting our country from harm. Yeah. That’s what Hitler told the people of Germany. “Your cooperation in turning in your neighbors and friends is ESSENTIAL to protecting our country from harm.” Does that freak anyone else out?)

Instead of giving the companies blanket immunity, as the Senate would do, the House proposal was understood to give the federal courts special authorization to hear classified evidence and decide whether the phone companies should be held liable. (So instead of using a case by case approach, the Senate (and Mr. Bush) want to just pretend that there was never any problem and the phone companies couldn’t have possibly done anything wrong, because after all, they are a big business and stand to loose a lot of money if they are found in the wrong and then where would Mr. Bush and his lap dogs get campaigning money?)

But the president said that this approach “could reopen dangerous intelligence gaps (fear mongering) by putting in place a cumbersome court approval process that would make it harder to collect intelligence on foreign terrorists” (fear mongering) and could lead, he said, to disclosure of state secrets. (fear mongering) I would like to read about someone who was a genuine threat and was found through their phone conversations. I’d really like to hear about it. Maybe it’s happened and I’ve simply not been paying attention. If such a case has happened, please leave a link the sources so I can be informed.

“Their partisan legislation would extend protections we enjoy as Americans to foreign terrorists overseas,” Mr. Bush said. (Gee, I really don’t see that. If a terrorist is overseas having a phone conversation with someone in the US, and they are seen to be a threat, our government has the soveriegnty to apprehend the person on US soil. So, what protection are they “extending” to foreign terrorist overseas? Oh, that’s right. Mr. Bush has stated that any country that has a terrorists in it (or is suspected of having a terrorist in it) is an enemy of the US. So we can go apprehend them from any other country as well. I think the real problem Mr. Bush has with this legislation is that it would limit the number of countries he can order our troops to invade and would limit the frequency of such action.)

In a statement yesterday, 19 Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee questioned the administration’s arguments.

“We have concluded that the administration has not established a valid and credible case justifying the extraordinary action of Congress enacting blanket retroactive immunity as set forth in the Senate bill,” they said.

Some 40 lawsuits are pending in federal courts, charging that by cooperating with the eavesdropping program put in place after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the phone companies violated their responsibilities to customers and federal privacy laws. (But that’s okay and we should all be thankful that Mr. Bush is willing to set our rights aside to protect us from the evil terrorists. We should not hold the phone companies liable for their behavior. We shouldn’t ask them to be responsible or even ethical. We should give them immunity because…because…otherwise, you are a terrorist-loving, unpatriotic, sinful, ungrateful, tree-hugging turncoat and we don’t like you.)

Last Tuesday I watched a movie which I’d been waiting for for over four years, although I didn’t know it.

Six years ago, I began researching birth, labor, and everything else those two subjects entail. I began this study because I wanted to have a homebirth and my husband was not convinced. He asked me to convince him that it was safer, healthier, and overall better than a conventional hospital birth.

We were both surprised at how the evidence stacked up. Homebirth or midwife assisted birth was by far the safer and healthier option for most pregnancies and births. Indisputably so, though of course, many did dispute it. My husband was even called a murderer for risking his wife’s and child’s life for such a hedonist act. And yet study after study supported homebirth advocates’ claims that homebirth was the better option.

While reading books and articles from medical journals, I would experience feelings of rage and impotence as I realized the magnitude of the average person’s ignorance in things of birth. The American medical establishment purposefully misrepresents information or simply does not give information to expectant mothers. The information they do give them they present in such a way to inspire fear. Fear of this. Fear of that. Fear. FEAR.

The end result is the majority of women are afraid. They are afraid of the pain (which, while in fact painful, is not insurmountable, and I know; I was in labor for over two days). They are afraid of themselves dying or their babies dying, both of which are less likely in a midwife assisted birth than in a doctor assisted birth. They are afraid their baby won’t be healthy (higher apgar score from midwife assisted births than doctor assisted births).

Basically, the less the hospital, doctors and interventions are involved in a birth, the better the outcome and yet, no one know this. When I would tell people we planned on a homebirth, not only were they adamantly against it, they were completely ignorant of the issues involved. I could site sources until I was blue in the face but the simple fact is that most people do not understand or believe things unless they see them on their TV.

Fast forward four years from my daughter’s birth. A friend tells me of this movie called “The Business of Being Born” (for those who can’t run their trailer, here’s a YouTube link) and asks if I want to see it with her. We drive up to Hattiesburg where it is being shown on a college campus for free.

The movie was phenomenal. There were some technical difficulties with the movie and the equipment in the auditorium but we got to see about 95% of the movie. The movie is a lot more about women having choices in the birthing experience than an apology for homebirth. There are no judgments made. They simple state the nature of the problem. The U.S. has the second worst birth stats of industrialized countries. Midwives attend between 70 and 80% of the births in the other countries and the U.S. “stands alone,” having only about half of a percent of births attended by midwives. And yet more babies and more mothers die in the U.S. from birth related causes than anywhere else. Why?

The answer is simple. Money. What costs more, a simple birth with no interventions and no medications or a traumatic birth that results in days and weeks of hospitalization? A healthy baby or one that requires a day or two in the ICU? A routine vaginal delivery with no interventions or a surgery through the abdominal muscles and the uterus and the subsequent days of recovery?

“But…but…but…,” I hear you cry. At first I don’t believe this. Insurance companies wouldn’t stand for this. They want the cheapest labors and births as possible, right? Wrong. They want it complicated and expensive for mothers or else they wouldn’t keep paying the insurance companies. If birth was simple and at home, most mother’s could afford to pay their midwives out of pocket.

The insurance companies, the hospitals, the AMA, and doctors themselves have a vested interest in birth being traumatic, hospitalized, and filled with interventions. It’s job security. They are fighting for their continued existence and these are the people most women trust to tell them the truth about what they need for a healthy pregnancy and birth. Yikes!

(I can cite sources for all these claims but see no reason to look the info up again if no one reads this or cares. If you want to know, just ask and I’ll provide the source documents. Also, I realize there are exceptions to this. There are doctors out there who are great advocates of natural birth but they are the exception and not the rule and hospital policies do not generally support these doctors.)

Okay, I happened to run across this study while researching other things relating to home birth and I thought I’d post it. It confirms everything I’ve said here, regarding home birth being as safe with fewer interventions than hospital birth. While it is only one study it contains links, in the references section, to many more studies.

The phrase “National Security” brings my blood to a boiling point.

“National Security.”

Not personal freedom. Not individual’s rights. Not uphold the Constitution (though I have problems with the Constitution, at least it’s a standard to which the Federal Government could be held). Just “National Security.”

“National” as in, I don’t have to do anything because I can rest in the group identity of being a part of the “nation.”

“Security.” Most people think of safety and that’s reasonable. But is it reasonable to expect anyone or anything to keep you safe, besides your self? What right do you have to safety you are not willing to guarantee yourself? I have a right to safety because I am willing to cut down anyone trying to harm me or mine. I am willing to accept the increased danger and responsibility of having a firearm in my home because I understand that my family’s safety is my job and no one else’s. The government can not keep me safe nor is it their job. It is my job and mine alone.

An example. I am a parent. It is my job to keep my daughter safe until she has the maturity to make decisions for herself. With this comes a decrease in her personal freedom. She doesn’t get to cross the street whenever, where ever, however, she pleases. She must wait until I am with her. She must wait for my timing. She does not get to eat whatever, whenever she wants. She must eat what I put in front of her, when I put it in front of her (with increasing choices as she gets older). She does not get to play with whomever, whenever, where ever, she likes. I limit her friendships and contacts based on a multitude of factors, many of which she is not yet aware. As she matures, who she chooses to be friends with will fall upon her shoulders more and more but part of her training for adulthood is the limiting of negative influences (she’s four by the way, and the standards for her friends are that they not be overly cruel and that they have supervision and that the TV not be on constantly). She does not have privacy. I listen when she and her friends are talking, making sure that everyone is playing fair and that I am prepared for any questions or comments that may spring from their conversations. I read her mail to her. I listen as she talks on the phone. I do not allow her to play with guns or knives, while training her to respect them and shortly will begin her training in the safe and appropriate use of them. She does not yet bear the burden of defending herself. That burden is mine to bear while she is a child.

However, if when she has reached adulthood, I continue to run her life in this manner, any sane person would say it had become unhealthy and, if one truly thought it through, immoral.

So why do we allow the federal government to make these kinds of rules and restrictions for us? The government has the “right” to wiretap phones without a warrant. “National Security” they say. Bullshit. “National Control” might be a better phrase. They are taking more and more control and the American public grabs hold of that hand and says, “Thank you so much for not making me look both ways before I cross the street. I would hate to be responsible for my own safety.”

We say, “Thank you for listening in on my conversations. I would hate to have to think for myself and try to deduce the meaning of a conversation without your help.”

It’s laziness and an unwillingness to take personal responsibility. If my daughter, upon reaching adulthood, refuses to take responsibility for her actions, I have failed. If she still needs me to decide if a friend is a good influence on her, she has not been trained up in the way she should go. If I must still protect her from playground bullies, then I have failed in my parental duty to teach her to defend herself.

BUT, she shares in the responsibility. I may have been a crappy parent but she could have taught herself those things. And that is where the American people as a whole stand. We’ve had a crappy parent. Our parent (the government) taught us that the police would protect us; they had our best at heart; they knew best for us; they could better decide what we needed to learn in school, who we could learn from; they knew how much we were worth as we entered the job market; they knew what we needed financially; they keep us safe by not allowing us to have guns because we might hurt ourselves.

It is time to wake up, America. The government is not your friend. It is not your parent. It is not your uncle. The government is a business and it is in the business of having, keeping and securing more power. Government has a place. Don’t get me wrong. But it must fear its people and not the other way around.

I don’t believe the United States Constitution to be a flawless document but it’s better than nothing. You might be under the false understanding that the Constitution guarantees certain “unalienable” rights. You are wrong. The Constitution simply spells out the things that are worth fighting for. “Unalienable” means they are yours whether they are recognized or not. The only thing that guarantees a right is the willingness to fight and die for those rights. Americans are so afraid of fighting, the danger and death which it brings, that they are willing to give up all of their rights simply so they don’t have to experience any of the suffering of defending those rights.

I’m not sure the average American deserves those rights. An inability to see that some things are worth fighting for and worth dying for and an unwillingness to fight for something as precious and beautiful as personal freedom denotes a character so small and ill formed, I’m not sure it’s worth saving.

This is the article which inspired this rant. US Court Throws Out Challenge to Wiretap Program

Oh, and check this one out. Amtrack

This is cut and pasted without permission. I hope they don’t mind since all I’m doing is agreeing with them. Here’s the link to the article as I originally read it…original article

Picking a safer car for you, your family, and the planet

By Laura Schewel and Noah Buhayar Posted Sun Feb 3, 2008 10:49pm PST

Laura Schewel is an analyst with MOVE - The Transportation Innovation Group and Noah Buhayar is a fellow at Rocky Mountain Institute.

Many consumers believe that the goals of a “safer car” and a “more fuel-efficient car” are at loggerheads, and that any increase in gas mileage will lead directly to increased fatalities.

This misconception is based in large part on a common assumption: The heavier the car, the safer it must be. Collectively, Americans have bought into this idea. The mass of the average personal vehicle in the U.S. has gone up 29% since 1987.

While that idea that more steel equals more protection seems intuitive, it turns out to be false. In fact, the best scientific research shows that automotive safety has nothing to do with vehicle weight, but everything to do with vehicle size and design.

Safety for you and your family
Heavier cars are not safer in a collision. Why? Cars are not simple, solid objects that collide like billiard balls on a table; they have crush zones and structural features designed to absorb impact.

The more crush zone available (the longer or wider the car) and the better the structural design, the safer the occupants will be in a crash.

These examples from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, an independent, nonprofit organization that compiles fatality statistics, illustrate the point:

• Drivers in a Dodge Neon or Chevrolet Cavalier (2,400 and 2,700 pounds, respectively) are twice as likely to die in their vehicles as drivers of Volkswagen Jettas or Honda Civics (2,300 and 2,700 pounds), due to the superior crash design and safety features of the Jetta and Civic.
• Drivers of a Toyota 4Runner (the safest SUV) are 25 times less likely to die in their vehicles than those who drive Chevrolet Blazers — the least-safe SUV and the least-safe personal vehicle — again due to superior design. (Statistics cover model years 1995-1999.)

Studies have proven that increasing the length of a car (its crush zone) while maintaining the same weight leads to reduced fatalities. To find out how crashworthy a vehicle really is, check its government star ratings, or its ratings and driver death rates from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.

Crash avoidance is harder to measure, but any vehicle equipped with Electronic Stability Control (ESC) will be better able to avoid crashes than a vehicle without.

Safety for your planet
Buying a heavier (and often more expensive) car is no guarantee of safety, but it will definitely lower your gas mileage. That’s because heavier cars use more fuel.

A reliance on hefty cars that aren’t necessarily well designed not only compromises our safety on the road (43,000 people died in U.S. auto accidents last year), but also the safety of future generations by emitting an unnecessary amount of greenhouse gas into the atmosphere.

Luckily, in this instance there’s no need to compromise between what’s good for you and your family and what’s better for the planet.

The more people realize that light, long, well-designed cars are safer than clunky, heavy cars, the closer we’ll be to pushing the market toward smarter, lighter vehicles. And the closer we’ll be toward reducing the greenhouse gases spewing from our tailpipes-some 10% of the human contribution to climate change.

This article isn’t funny at all. I just color changed some phrases I found especially ominous (followed by comments from me).

Tax Rebates Deal Announced
Thursday January 24, 2:20 pm ET
By Andrew Taylor, Associated Press Writer

Congress, Treasury Secretary Announce Deal on Tax Rebates, Business Breaks to Boost Economy