Appeals Court Overrules?Va. Late-Term Abortion Ban – Yahoo! News

This is such a relief because it means somewhere in the hallowed halls of justice, even in this rapid, misogynistic, oppressive administration, there is a shred of sanity.

Here’s a heart warming quote:
“We’ve got a major problem and it’s not with the legislature, it’s with the courts,” Cuccinelli said. “Because of these sorts of rulings . . . we get a bunch of judges that want to write their own policy into the Constitution.”

The panel wrote that its decision was based on U.S. Supreme Court decisions and noted that its obligation was to that precedent. Citing a previous decision, the panel wrote: “But even if ‘abortion [is] offensive to our most basic principles of morality . . . that cannot control our decision,’ for our obligation is to apply the Supreme Court’s definition of personal liberty, ‘not to mandate our own moral code.’ “

See that? Someone is actually pointing out that the constitution grants us freedom of choice even in the face of right wing Christian fundamentalists. Oh Happy Day!

But wait. “Someone” is a Clinton appointee. Here is why you need to do everything to can to help keep the Bush appointees out of the courts:

The 4th Circuit is generally regarded as the nation’s most conservative appellate court, but yesterday’s decision was written by Judge M. Blane Michael and joined by Judge Diana Gribbon Motz — both appointees of President Bill Clinton, a Democrat. Judge Paul V. Niemeyer, an appointee of President George H.W. Bush, dissented.

It’s a thin victory but we are still winning. If you care about these issues please make sure your elected representatives know. If you live in a Red state join one of these organizations if not all of them. They like it if you give money but even if you don’t want to do that they organize lots of campaigns and the more people they can inform and get involved, the better.

the ACLU
MoveOn.org
NARAL
Not In Our Name

You can never put too much effort into thwarting the misguided, meglomaniacal efforts of the Bush Administration and the most important think to focus on now is judicial nominations. He is absolutely winning that war. This latest farce with the nuclear option is a perfect example. All the Democratic party could do to prevent the Republicans from rewriting the democratic process was to agree to the Bush nominees. Talk about your thin victory. Fight back people! You must fight back.

No – I have not been having kinky sex. I ran a little over 9 miles this morning and my buns are screamin’ sore. My feet are killing me. I am training to run a marathon and it seems to be a little bit like having a baby – you forget about the pain and just want what comes at the end. Crossing the finish line pales in comparison to holding your new baby and believing that you will be able to sleep on your stomach again (but not as soon as you think – HA!) but it’s a pretty good thrill. I’ve done it once before and somehow my recollection is that that it wasn’t that hard. Bullshit – it’s that hard. Maybe harder. I somehow forgot about the days spent running for a couple of hours and then needing to go to bed to recuperate. I’m not giving up, though – perseverance furthers* and I will have my day!

* So the I-Ching tells us

No – I have not been having kinky sex. I ran a little over 9 miles this morning and my buns are screamin’ sore. My feet are killing me. I am training to run a marathon and it seems to be a little bit like having a baby – you forget about the pain and just want what comes at the end. Crossing the finish line pales in comparison to holding your new baby and believing that you will be able to sleep on your stomach again (but not as soon as you think – HA!) but it’s a pretty good thrill. I’ve done it once before and somehow my recollection is that that it wasn’t that hard. Bullshit – it’s that hard. Maybe harder. I somehow forgot about the days spent running for a couple of hours and then needing to go to bed to recuperate. I’m not giving up, though – perseverance furthers* and I will have my day!

* So the I-Ching tells us

Or at least 7 for me. I have 7 regular readers. Would you mind terribly checking in?

Thanks!

I love my dreams – even the bad ones. I believe that while my bedding covers my body and keeps it warm, my dreams peel back the covers of my thoughts and my emotional state and let me see what lurks beneath the surface. Sometimes it is dirty socks, sometimes it is a long lost but cherished earring. I’m fascinated by the story lines my head builds to put structure around the discovery process.

Last night it was Tertia who camped out in my brain. Not the real Tertia – I have never met her but I do read Tertia’s blog.

In our story Tertia’s company was giving her a big going away party because she had decided to quit work and stay home with the babies. I decided to fly to South Africa to go to the party.

This is remarkable in more ways than one. Firstly, I am a party pooper. Unless I am the one giving the party I often won’t go. I will not travel for 1/2 an hour to go into San Francisco for a party. Getting to South Africa requires a 23 hour flight. From my party behavior you might conclude that J. D. Salinger and Brigitte Bardot got nothin’ up on me in the anti-social department but that would only be if you aren’t one of my coffee buddies. I’m really good at going out for coffee and I love my bookgroup – I just don’t go to many parties.

Second, Tertia loves her job and needs the money and has no intention of quitting. It might be worth noting that I did a little snooping around and it seems she and I have a similar professional background so that is probably how I ended up having a dream set in a work party for her.

Anyhow, getting back to the dream….I went to Tertia’s party and there she was, short hair, medium height, wearing a drab gray business suit, average build. As far as I can tell the real Tertia is tall and thin and has long hair and is gorgeous and divine but in my dreams she was really, really average. The party turnout was spectacular, though. There must have been 100 people there and they got her a sheet cake of remarkable proportions. It was the kind with the nasty lard and confectioners sugar frosting and the big, gloppy flowers and swirly things – the kind I hate. She gave a speech about how sad she was to be leaving and others gave speeches about how fabulous she was to work with and how much they would miss her and when the coffee and champagne came out and the real party started I left (no surprise there).

I went back to Chez Tertia to care for her child – a single 2 year old boy. I’m pretty sure this reflects my inherent belief that even in my dreams I could not handle twins. I adore 2 year old boys, though so there he was. My job was to keep him happy and to keep him from drowning in the pool out back, a job was I not entirely successful at.

Another important personal reference is needed here. I have a swimming pool in my back yard and when my kids were little I was terrified of them drowning. The first thing we did when we moved in to this house was to put a cast iron fence around the immediate perimeter of the pool We kept it padlocked at all times. These are the kind of locks that have a dial where you have to turn once to the right, twice to the left and once to the right, hitting the 3 numbers exactly. We kept our BBQ inside the pool area and I always locked the gate after I lit the fire and then again after I put the chicken on to cook. I knew that if I left the gate unlocked and turned my back that would be the one 32 second interval in which one of the kids would get in there and either incur 3rd degree burns on their precious faces or fall in the pool, inhale water and die instantaneously. On more than one occasion I found myself frantically spinning the lock as a flames shot skyward, consuming my chicken. We learned to enjoy what I dubbed ‘pool blackened chicken’. Perhaps that is one of the reasons I’m a vegetarian today.

Anyhow, while I was watching the little boy he decided to start walking on top of the pool cover which was a piece of heavy duty bubble wrap type stuff. It won’t really hold any weight but in my dream it did. It held him until he almost got to the edge and then it failed and he went under the water. I wasn’t worried, though. I just reached in and was fishing him out – just as Tertia and Marko were returning from the party.

I was chagrined. I had failed as a babysitter which of course meant I was a failure as a parent.

My 16 year old daughter went to the midnight showing of Star Wars last night. She is a wonderful kid – focused on school, sociable, does not drink or use drugs, is not having sex with anyone and will most certainly be a huge success in life. Both my other kids are high school graduates and now college students and doing really well. All 3 of them are notably fine individuals, feedback I get from other adults on a regular basis. But allowing my high school student to go to a midnight movie on a school night is bad parenting, right? Not fatally bad parenting, not even really a problem – just conceptually bad parenting.

And so my friends of young children, be forewarned – you never lose your fear of being a failure as a parent no matter how great your kids are.

I’m about to have my first Motherless Mother’s Day if you don’t count me. That is, I am a mother and as such I will be celebrated by my adoring children but I won’t be able to bestow any honors on my own Mother who died last July. What I feel more than anything is bewildered at my lack of sorrow. I miss my Mom but I’m not feeling all that sad.

Ever since my premier as the Golden Girl of Mother’s Day I have focused on what the day means for me. I don’t think I ever forgot my mother but I know that I often realized with a start on the Saturday before Mother’s Day that I still hadn’t sent a card and that I had best call an FTD florist before there were no more flowers to be found. Buying my mother presents was not all that satisfying as I never knew if she would genuinely appreciate it or it would be met wtih a strained ‘Oh” followed by a perfunctory, “Thank you, dear” delivered with a smile stretched thin as onion skin.

My mother wasn’t a mean or a bad woman – she was just very bruised. Her life was sort of an endless series of disappointments and let downs from her Grandmother refusing to let her cut off the sleeves of her undershirts so they wouldn’t show below the capped sleeves of her little girl dresses to being widowed with 4 children at the age of 35. When it comes to cosmic slights having your 37 year old husband die in his sleep must certainly rank in the top 10. My mother was predisposed to seeing the world and everyone in it as shadowy specters angling to make her miserable and when the powers that be delivered the coup de grâce she knew she was right.

Her response was to self medicate with alcohol and in the process become this frightening, unpredictable terror. Maternal instinct kept her generous and caring most of the time and she took good care of us but boy, could she be ugly. She heaped her own low self-esteem and horrible body image issues on me like a teen-aged boy filling his plate at an all you can eat buffet. She could go from sobbing and telling me I was her favorite child to calling me a fat whore in matter of minutes. Even in adulthood I could not stand to hear her question my judgment about anything without wanting to scream, “I’M NOT AN IDIOT, GODDAMNIT!”

In the end we did okay. For the last 7 or so years of her life she lived near me, widowed once again, and we saw each other once or twice a month. With the exception of an occasioal soggy phone call I almost never experienced her drunk. We had a good relationship. I know she loved me and I loved her, too and on Mother’s Day we would usually get together. My kids were old enough by then to take care of both of us. They took us for picnics in the park some years or my Mom would come over to my house and we would have a little brunch thing. It was nice and it was proper but what I always looked forward to was the kids bringing me a latte and the paper in bed and the kids giving me cards and the kids paying tribute to me. I am looking forward to that as I write this entry. It has really been a me, me, me Hallmark Holiday for the last 22 years.

This year I am feeling a bit of a slow leak in my bubble of anticipation, though. Too bad my Mom can’t come over for coffee cake and fruit salad and to do my Sunday Paper crossword puzzles when I finally do get out of bed….. Damn.

I’m about to have my first Motherless Mother’s Day if you don’t count me. That is, I am a mother and as such I will be celebrated by my adoring children but I won’t be able to bestow any honors on my own Mother who died last July. What I feel more than anything is bewildered at my lack of sorrow. I miss my Mom but I’m not feeling all that sad.

Ever since my premier as the Golden Girl of Mother’s Day I have focused on what the day means for me. I don’t think I ever forgot my mother but I know that I often realized with a start on the Saturday before Mother’s Day that I still hadn’t sent a card and that I had best call an FTD florist before there were no more flowers to be found. Buying my mother presents was not all that satisfying as I never knew if she would genuinely appreciate it or it would be met wtih a strained ‘Oh” followed by a perfunctory, “Thank you, dear” delivered with a smile stretched thin as onion skin.

My mother wasn’t a mean or a bad woman – she was just very bruised. Her life was sort of an endless series of disappointments and let downs from her Grandmother refusing to let her cut off the sleeves of her undershirts so they wouldn’t show below the capped sleeves of her little girl dresses to being widowed with 4 children at the age of 35. When it comes to cosmic slights having your 37 year old husband die in his sleep must certainly rank in the top 10. My mother was predisposed to seeing the world and everyone in it as shadowy specters angling to make her miserable and when the powers that be delivered the coup de grâce she knew she was right.

Her response was to self medicate with alcohol and in the process become this frightening, unpredictable terror. Maternal instinct kept her generous and caring most of the time and she took good care of us but boy, could she be ugly. She heaped her own low self-esteem and horrible body image issues on me like a teen-aged boy filling his plate at an all you can eat buffet. She could go from sobbing and telling me I was her favorite child to calling me a fat whore in matter of minutes. Even in adulthood I could not stand to hear her question my judgment about anything without wanting to scream, “I’M NOT AN IDIOT, GODDAMNIT!”

In the end we did okay. For the last 7 or so years of her life she lived near me, widowed once again, and we saw each other once or twice a month. With the exception of an occasioal soggy phone call I almost never experienced her drunk. We had a good relationship. I know she loved me and I loved her, too and on Mother’s Day we would usually get together. My kids were old enough by then to take care of both of us. They took us for picnics in the park some years or my Mom would come over to my house and we would have a little brunch thing. It was nice and it was proper but what I always looked forward to was the kids bringing me a latte and the paper in bed and the kids giving me cards and the kids paying tribute to me. I am looking forward to that as I write this entry. It has really been a me, me, me Hallmark Holiday for the last 22 years.

This year I am feeling a bit of a slow leak in my bubble of anticipation, though. Too bad my Mom can’t come over for coffee cake and fruit salad and to do my Sunday Paper crossword puzzles when I finally do get out of bed….. Damn.

Some of you are using HaloScan to see how many people are reading your blog in real time. It also offers to manage your comments for you. I even have the counter installed on this site but not the comments.

When I installed it and first looked at my handy work there was a link just below the ‘online’ counter that said ‘Adult Content’ or something like that. ICK! I somehow managed to remove that and just leave the counter.

Then I noticed that all of my previous comments were GONE! Oh horrors – I have so few I couldn’t stand that so I went back to the haloscan site and did a little reading and found that they comments were still ‘around’ but haloscan can’t access them unless you get the paid version. Hmmmm… I’m not really into paying for something I can get for free (comments) so I rolled back Haloscan (but somehow kept the counter) and called it good.

I was just over on SBFH and attempted to post a comment when I noticed about 4 or 5 links at the bottom of her comment popup. They all looked suspiciously like the crap that gets swept to my spam folder. Windows XP for $50! Speed Up Windows! and so forth. When I tried to submit my comment I got a 404 as if HaloScan could read my negative thoughts about those ads.

So – Word, people. HaloScan is not precisely free. It does not cost you to use the free version and you get some goodies (trackback, the counter, the popup thing and apparently something called gravatars) but you become the purveyor of links to stuff that most people consider spam.

Just sayin’

My blog is relatively barren. Relative to all the stuff I write in my head, anyhow. My head explodes with ideas – I process my whole day in terms of how I would write about it – and yet I don’t. I am sitting right next to a list that says:

Long lines at Peets
Girls badge
Internet dating
Then and Now

All of those are things I would like to write about and yet I suspect I won’t. Or I will write something and post it to the drafts folder of my email and forget about it.

Part of the problem is that I’m a terrible first draft writer. When I write it comes out like crap and requires several edits which means it takes a long time which is a great excuse to just skip it. Part of it is that I don’t find most of my writing particularly entertaining and yes, I realize that is an acquired skill that will not get better until I put more time into the craft. Mostly I seem to approach writing the same way I deal with exercise. I listen to the whiney little voice in my head who is a master of excuses and a notorious procrastinator.

I feel like the Elephant Man who said (in the fictionalized play) “Sometimes I think my head is so big because it is so full of dreams” only mine is so full of stuff to write about. It’s also a rather small head but hopefully you get the point.

The 4 or so people who regularly read this blog all have blogs of their own (I think). So how do you do it? What motivates you? How do you get the stuff rattling around in your head to come out the ends of your fingers? I’m not as concerned about the ‘why’ as I am about the ‘how’.

Discuss….

It seems the Republicans have finally been convinced not to try to adjust the ethics rules to accommodate that lying, cheating sack of dog poop, Tom DeLay.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the package was certain to include a reversal of the rule that would automatically dismiss an ethics complaint after 45 days if the committee is deadlocked, according to the report.

A House Republican aide told the newspaper the automatic-dismissal rule was “the rule that is most commonly believed to be designed to protect Tom DeLay” and that it was “impossible to win the communications battle” on it.

One can only hope this is the beginning of a reversal of the steam rolling our government has taken under the Bush Administration.