Thursday, September 04, 2003

Don't like to pay taxes?  Read this. Today's editorial by Ruth Rosen, "Your Tax Dollars At Work", counters Arnold Schwarzenegger's "we pay taxes every minute of every day for nothing" platform.  It describes many of the things that your tax dollars pay for.  Things like highways and traffic signals, hospitals and libraries, food that you know isn't tainted and drugs that won't kill you.  We all have to help pay for this stuff, folks. Okay, earthquake's over, and so is my blogging for the day (finally, eh?).  Thanks for putting up with this chatty chick today.  :-) 10:01:22 PM    Here's what I have to say about THAT! []

And that, my friends, is democracy in action Miguel Estrada, one of Bush's conservative judicial nominees has withdrawn his name from consideration.  Republicans were so annoyed at the fact that they could not break the Democratic filibuster that they tried to get the rules themselves changed.  Nice try. Just as a reminder, though, the whole filibuster was based on Estrada not providing documentation on his positions on certain issues.  He may have been an okay choice from a conservative president.  But we'll never know.  When I go for a job interview for a computer programming job, and my prospective employer asks me to document my skills with certain programming languages or on certain platforms, I refuse at my own peril.  But that's what Estrada has done.  So now he pays the price. I don't think he's ever even said why he won't say anything.  The only thing I remember was something about "the president wouldn't have nominated me unless he thought I was a good choice".  This article in Salon from almost a year ago was also interesting - it says that most of the opposition to Estrada from the left is due to the "hail fellow well met" attitude from the likes of Ann Coulter and her ilk.  They know what that means, they just don't know how bad it could mean.  And that's all they wanted to find out - whether it was tolerably bad or intolerably bad.  Now, we won't know. Doubly interesting in that article was the statement that the Democrats' best chance for keeping him off the bench would be to refuse to vote.  Then it goes on to say that that's not likely.  Guess what - it worked! 9:55:38 PM    Here's what I have to say about THAT! []

More attempts by research to discount women's suffering Okay, so here's the results of some research where they are saying that "morning sickness may be as much a psychological illness as a physical one".  Maybe it's just the vagueness of the news report and not the actual results themselves, but what's in this article just irks me.  I'll rant now and search for real findings later. First, let me just state for the record that I am not now, nor have I ever been, pregnant.  And I also believe that it's possible that some morning sickness may be psychological.  But equal amounts with physical?  I don't think so. Okay, so, there's this quote: "Women's actual symptoms and how they perceived them were very different." What kind of hooey is that?  This ain’t like bleeding, or strength, or anything else you can objectively measure.  Are they asking the women to collect their vomit in a measuring cup or weigh it or something, to prove how sick they are, and if it’s not at least X amount, they should just put up and shut up?  Are they saying that if a woman says she’s “severely nauseous” but she has never actually vomited and has only retched once, then she’s obviously not severely nauseous?  Bull hockey!  These are women that were nauseous enough to call a telephone helpline!  Maybe they know that they need the calories in the food they just ate, or how stomach acids can destroy the esophagus, or maybe they work and don’t want to let people know they’re pregnant by spewing all over the cafeteria.  Ever think of that? “Women will tend to perceive symptom severity according to how they are feeling overall and how other aspects of their life are affected.” So here are some of those other vague symptoms that, due to their very unmeasureable nature, apparently don’t exist.  So if I’m pregnant and I feel generally crappy overall, for 6-12 weeks, and that is affecting other aspects of my life, like maybe my partner is annoys the crap out of me all the time, and I can’t get out of bed because I’m so tired, but I’m not actually giving donations to the porcelain goddess, my morning sickness must not be as severe as I tell people it is? "Women who eat frequent, small meals reported feeling much better than women who did not. … An empty stomach tends to aggravate symptoms." Yeah?  Well, diabetes works the same way, and no one ever says that those people don’t have an illness.  What?  You’re saying you can measure the insulin response and that’s how you can know that someone’s diabetic?  Yeah, well a woman can take a pregnancy test and that’s how you can know that she’s got morning sickness when she says she’s nauseous. Thanks to Secular Blasphemy for the link. 7:20:04 PM    Here's what I have to say about THAT! []

F*** me, that was my first f***ing earthquake! Man, that ROCKED!  The whole building, I mean!  Cool! 6:43:09 PM    Here's what I have to say about THAT! []

Weather terminology explained Hot breeze - Louisiana in August Hot wind –Midwest in August right before the tornado hits Warm breeze – tropical island beach Cool breeze – expression when I was growing up, meaning “good deal” Cold wind – winter in Chicago Cool wind  - today in San Francisco.  Not cold, and not a breeze.  Refreshing! 6:12:42 PM    Here's what I have to say about THAT! []