November 2003 Week 1

Saturday  November 1 , 2003

"Those who failed to oppose me, who readily agreed with me, accepted all my views, and yielded easily to my opinions, were those who did me the most injury, and were my worst enemies, because, by surrendering to me so easily, they encouraged me to go too far... I was then too powerful for any man, except myself, to injure me."

Napoleon Bonaparte, emperor of France 1769-1821)

Cindy had another manic episode... I think all the candy from Halloween may have contributed but she was definitely out of her mind for a while there... The only thing that works for me when she is having one of these aggressive episode is to hold her and force her to see and hear me, otherwise all she does is lash out and scream... so I got her down to the ground and held her still. I held her face so that she had to look at me and she squeezed her eyes shut and just screamed.  Christy came out and took her into our bedroom and tried to reason with her, big mistake. Cindy said I beat her up and stood on her stomach. Cindy wouldn't stop and got madder and madder at Christy and eventually started punching and kicking her, one kick got Christy on the side of her knee and that took her to the floor... I was in Monica's room trying to calm her down, Monica didn't understand what was happening. All I heard was Cindy screaming, it wasn't till after she went to the ground that Christy decided to call me

I called Kaiser and got permission to take her off Clonidine and put her back on Resperadol...  We decided that having her fat was preferable to having her pugilistic...

I just heard Molly Ivans on one of the quiz shows on the radio, what a sharp lady... I read a few of her columns... I like her.

Monica apparently has the same flu Autumn had...

Sunday  November 2 , 2003

Words, like eyeglasses, blur everything that they do not make clear.

Joseph Joubert, French philosopher 1754-1824

I heard a journalist pronounce the word Clamber without silencing the 'b' and I was curious if she had mispronounced it or if I had... it's another one of those words that is pronounced either way... Like Deluxe & Non sequitur

Clamber  (klmbr, klmr)
intr.v. clam·bered, clam·ber·ing, clam·bers

To climb with difficulty, especially on all fours; scramble.

 

Monica was up all night barfing, poor baby. it's 2130 now and she seems fine but she was a pretty sick girl for a while there.

 

Cindy is still having trouble seems like afternoons are hard for her to cope with for some reason. Monica. 

 

 I heard from a cousin of Brian Kazlov (One of my friends during High School)  too. He had seen a reference to Brian on this website... He gave me some new information about Brian... I wish I had managed to stay in touch with him, of course, if our friendship had been that big a deal he could have tried to stay in touch with me... Oh well... I get 

Monday  November 3 , 2003

There are people who put their dreams in a little box and say, 'Yes, I've got dreams, of course I've got dreams.' Then they put the box away and bring it out once in awhile to look in it, and yep, they're still there. These are great dreams, but they never even get out of the box. It takes an uncommon amount of guts to put your dreams on the line, to hold them up and say, 'How good or how bad am I?' That's where courage comes in. - Erma Louise Bombeck

I broke my "Partial" last Friday at noon, (biting into a Fajita Rollup at Applebee's) I called then to see if they could fix it but they said I had to wait till today... I took it in at 0900 and they said I could pick it up at 1630... I have been very self-conscious about my appearance for the past three days. Not having it in place makes me look like a character from "Deliverance" ... I have never considered myself 'vain' but there limits to my ability to sublimate my ego.

Speaking of 'obsession'... 'teenagers' is a topic that is preoccupying me at the moment... not only am I living with 4 of them in my very own house but my teenagers associate with other teenagers and I seem to be encountering these self-absorbed little entities far to often to suit me. Example... today I dropped off Cindy at the High School, a bad place to go if you have an aversion to post-adolescent bipeds. I let Cindy out of the car and started up to the crosswalk, a female type teenager actually looked up at me and paused as though she would have grudgingly allowed me to pass so without a thought to the consequences I allowed a feeling of magnanimity to instruct my left hand to wave her by... silly me. I waited at least three minutes for another opportunity to cross the crosswalk. When a break in the endless, Zombie like shuffling hoard presented itself I crossed quickly only to travel about thirty feet before encountering two male type teenagers who had probably driven to school themselves. They were taking a 'Power Trip' down the middle of the road. Daring anyone to suggest they make way for pissed off Daddies and PMS Stresses Soccer Moms... I kept going, but so did they, so I had to come to a stop... they won, whoopee for them. I guess my thoughts about their arrogance must have been displayed subconsciously on my face because they both glowered at me and smiled smugly, one even flipped me off as he called me an asshole... one of these days I hope he tries that in LA and some guy who has had a bad day says, says to himself, with his foot less than an inch from the throttle, I wonder how high I can bounce this insolent little piss-ant if I stomp on the accelerator,

There was a three car accident on the dirt road, about 100 yards from the pavement... looks like one of them was really flying and didn't see the other coming down of the high road. the SUV spun out and took out a new Toyota coming the other way... no one was hurt... we have a few folks up her that think this is a Sprint Car Track... others that think that if the shock absorbers compress that you are going too fast... some folks to 5-MPH or less and others hit 60... the two contingents hate each other... this accident was inevitable.

Monica stayed home sick.

We had an appointment with "B"'s new Social Worker... actually it was "B"'s Social Worker's Boss... I wish I felt it was going to do him some good. "B" had another appointment at 1300 but we forgot about it... damn...I rescheduled.

I got my partial back... it is screwed up they put the teeth in wrong, I look like Bugs Bunny, I have to go back in tomorrow.

It rained pretty much all day... it put out most of the fires or at least slowed them down so that the fire fighters could get them under control. I heard a fella say "God must have heard my prayers"  Well gosh, what an insensitive thing to say... If God had been in control of this situation than why did he let the fire burn 3500 houses and kill 23 people... why did God listen to your prayers and not the prayers of the people who were killed or the prayers of the owners of all those homes... people are so delusional... Sorry... I'll shut up now.

Tuesday  November 4 , 2003

Forgive me my nonsense as I also forgive the nonsense of those who think they talk sense.

Robert Frost

This weeks "Foreign Correspondent" column was excellent, Margolis always seems to be able to articulate what I am thinking.

I took my partial in to be repaired... again... it came back 100% better... at least now I can go out in public...  I logged 200 miles getting it fixed

People are still bashing Barney... makes me crazy... they think nothing of perpetuating the Tooth Fairy, Easter Bunny and Santa Claus but Barney, who never pretends to be real, every video says right up front that "Barney is your imaginary friend and he can be conjured up any time you need him." All of my kids loved Barney, they all danced and sang with him, Calie needed him to go to sleep, Cindy needed him to help her cope with the chaos around here. Autumn still loves Barney and we turn on a video every night to get her to relax enough to go to sleep. When the time comes to move on there is no neurotic  trauma when they decide that they don't need a talking purple dinosaur, not like the other big three... Santa's existence dies hard. None of this is bad, fantasy and self-deception are a facts of life... we should probably pray that this is the worst emotional ordeal they have to endure...   

Christy and I voted today... I probably screwed up by voting for the wrong people and initiatives but I was put off by the authors of the No on AA (Bond initiative to build a High School) Just a bunch of old farts that didn't want their taxes to go up. The Yes people had some good points... namely Property Values should go up and the State will match the Bond... we'll see
 

Wednesday  November 5 , 2003\

Half of the American people have never read a newspaper. Half never voted for President. One hopes it is the same half.

Gore Vidal

We kept Autumn home again... runny nose and Cindy had a minimum day at school... Christy and I took Autumn to Otto's for breakfast...

I am getting bummed out by the news lately and I am a News junkie... what a quandary.

Thursday  November 6 , 2003

Mike is 16 today

Autumn went to school today, Christy is teaching at the college today, I have to pick up "B" and take him to the Scoliosis Clinic at Kaiser. Well, we got there early and had lunch off a 'Roach Coach' pretty good club sandwich... We checked in at 1300 and waited till about 1400 to be seen, we were there till 1630... they x-rayed him three separate times, once for scoliosis, once to look at his forearm to see if the lack of lateral mobility could be surgically rectified (It can't) , and finally something called a bone growth x-ray.

I took this picture of Mike about a week ago, he posed in such a way so as to assure he showed his ear ring... gag.

Los Angeles Times editorial:

"The actions taken by the New Hampshire Episcopalians are an affront to Christians everywhere. I am just thankful that the church's founder, Henry VIII and his wife Catherine of Aragon, his wife Anne Boleyn, his wife Jane Seymour, his wife Anne of Cleves, his wife Katherine Howard, and his wife Catherine Parr are no longer here to suffer through this assault on traditional Christian marriage."

EPA has dropped investigation and prosecution on 50 Power Plants... interesting coincidence that the only Power Companies that are still being investigated are ones that, for some reason, neglected to contribute to GW's election...

Friday  November 7 , 2003

The aim of an argument or discussion should not be victory, but progress.

Flat tire on the Taurus this morning. Very annoying and inconvenient... but it's the price you pay for living on a dirt road.

I picked up the fuel valve for the Katana...put it on and started up the bike... still craps out after a few minutes... $80 lesson... I will take it in to the pro's, should have done that in the first place.

I'm still upset at the news, more soldiers killed today, no one even knows who is doing it. Bush is calling them insurgents, I think that's probably pretty accurate. They aren't terrorists, at least not the ones shooting at the soldiers. I am convinced that the majority of the attacks are being orchestrated by someone. I think Saddam is dead but I also think someone is pulling the strings. The targets are military and collaborators. There is some terrorism,

Three years ago I talked about President Bush making a national goal of holding schools accountable for test scores and campus crime. At his insistence, a new federal law requires states to use violence data to identify "persistently dangerous" schools. School violence reports have taken on new importance since the mandate took affect. Principals can destroy their careers by turning in a report with a high incidence of disciplinary problems.  If they expel kids they are punished by not receiving funding for that child. Bush has created a system that demands that if a school is reporting scholastic scores and incident reports accurately they will be punished and maybe lose their jobs, they will definitely lose funding. Schools desperately teaching kids how to pass the STAR test and all the others and every thing else takes a back seat. The scores are manipulated to ensure that the school shows improvement, if it doesn't then it loses funding.

The schools that need money to improve their situation instead are getting less money ensuring that things will only get worse. Affluent schools with no behavior problems and motivated students will have their funding increased so that they can hire better teachers and equipment and their schools will improve. This will widen the gap between the impoverished areas and the affluent ones. It's a given, a lose lose situation for the poor schools and a Win Win for the wealthy ones.

Anyone who hasn't downloaded the Google Toolbar should do it and give it a try... it's just about all I use any more.

Just started playing Free Cell... cool game...

Saturday  November 8 , 2003

If you judge people, you have no time to love them.

Mother Teresa

This is kind of weird... THE WIRED MAN...

I took my bike in to get it running... exasperating. I called Joe Mikus and asked him to help me get it over to riders choice... he brought Darlene's pickup truck and his brother-in-law... I took them out to lunch at Don Cuco's, a bigger thrill for me than them. they go to La Cabaña the food is completely different there. In retrospect I guess I should have recommended La Cabaña... insensitive of me...

I installed a program called Plaxo... it is updating and verifying my address book.... amazing... I had over 1400 addresses in there... so far I have found 250 abandoned...

Sunday  November 9 , 2003

It is more shameful to distrust one's friends than to be deceived by them.

De la Rochefoucauld, French writer (1613-1680)

I have been inundated with e-mail today... it's wonderful... I have heard from folks I haven't talked to in three or four years... I have sent out 46 e-mails since I started Plaxo... I like what has happened. Some of the paranoid folks are having some trouble believing that there isn't something nefarious going on but I think it's OK. I found the program from an e-mail from Truth or fiction... I trust them.

Some interesting games on TV today... lots of teams got beat but other teams that shouldn't have been able to beat them... the Ram - Raven game was very interesting... neither offense could do anything, and the Defenses kept the game alive... there were 10 turnovers for the Ravens... goofy game.

Rush to War, Revisited

Published: November 7, 2003

To appreciate the significance of James Risen's article in yesterday's Times about an 11th-hour Iraqi peace offer last March, it helps to think back to that period. For months the Bush administration had been arguing that the only hope of disarming Baghdad was to steadily ratchet up the threat of an imminent American invasion. Only at that point, Washington asserted, might Saddam Hussein yield to the demands of repeated United Nations Security Council disarmament resolutions.

Yesterday's article shows that such reasoning may well have been sound. With American forces massed and ready to invade, the Iraqis suddenly expressed interest in meeting their obligations. Yet the article also shows that the administration seems not to have been serious about the idea of a coerced but peaceful solution at the very moment it may have been a realistic possibility.

The offer described in the article was conveyed to the Pentagon by a Lebanese-American businessman who said he had been sent by the chief of Iraq's Intelligence Service. The Iraqi message was that Baghdad no longer had any unconventional weapons and that it was willing to let American troops and experts conduct a search to prove this. The envoy also conveyed an offer to turn over a suspect in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center and relayed an Iraqi pledge to hold elections.

By March, Washington's military and political preparations for war were complete. The Bush administration was then showing little patience for diplomacy or anything else that might delay what it envisioned as a swift and easy military triumph, with jubilant Iraqis cheering American troops, a model Middle Eastern democracy rising in Baghdad, reconstruction paid for by Iraqi oil revenue and no lengthy military occupation.

Iraq has not worked out as planned in the last seven months. As President Bush frankly acknowledged yesterday, a democratic outcome is still far from assured. Yet even without resorting to hindsight, the Bush administration can be faulted for not making more of an effort to determine whether a satisfactory resolution of the weapons issue might have been achieved without war. Put differently, Washington should have put to the test its own words about using the threat of force to coerce concessions.

With crucial details unexplored, there is no way of knowing whether war could or should have been avoided, or indeed whether the offer was genuine or what kind of inspections would have been allowed. Any last-minute offer might have been unacceptable, particularly if it meant leaving Saddam Hussein's Baathist torturers in power. Yet surely Washington should have made the effort to learn more.

Administration supporters were fond of saying at the time that there were things Bush officials knew but could not share with the public. Little did we imagine that among those things was an offer that might have provided a way to avoid the war.

The Big Chill at the Lab

By BOB HERBERT

Published: November 3, 2003

A list of nearly 200 scientific researchers has been compiled and given to federal officials by the Traditional Values Coalition, a conservative group that goes wild over gay issues and federal funding of research related to human sexuality.

The list, which has sent a chill through some researchers, is being used by the coalition and its government allies in attempts to discredit the researchers and challenge or revoke their federal grants. It's a sloppy, dangerous and wildly inaccurate list, put together by people who are freaked out by the content of the studies, and unconcerned about their value.

The targeted studies cover a wide range of topics related to health and sexuality, including H.I.V. and AIDS, sexually transmitted diseases and adolescent sexual behavior.

The Web site of the Traditional Values Coalition is bizarrely fixated on sexual matters. The banner headline on the home page the other day blared, "HOMOSEXUAL URBAN LEGENDS: The Series . . ."

The site complained that "nearly $100 million has gone to research many projects which reasonable people, even those with no particular religious or political perspective, would view as prurient."

For a right-wing coalition to be hung up on these matters is one thing. But the coalition's list, which includes some of the most respected scientists and institutions in the country, is circulating among members of Congress and was forwarded to the National Institutes of Health, which is responsible for awarding the crucially important grants.

"It has a lot of people very nervous," said Dr. Thomas Coates, a professor in the Division of Infectious Diseases at the David Geffen School of Medicine at U.C.L.A. "People who have made a career out of this kind of research — well, when you see your name on a list you wonder what's going to happen to your funding."

"The list itself is less important than the context in which it's been generated," said Dr. Judith Auerbach, a vice president of the American Foundation for AIDS Research. Until recently Dr. Auerbach headed the Office of AIDS Research at the National Institutes of Health.

"The context is that in recent months there have been a series of specific inquiries to the N.I.H. from Congressional committee members, through their staffs in particular, asking about specific grants and specific grantees based apparently on the content of those grants."

The content is usually related to such matters as the AIDS virus, high-risk sexual behavior and other topics linked in some way to sexuality.

"Those inquiries come in a very negative tone," said Dr. Auerbach. "And they cast aspersions on the quality and the content of the science — from someone who doesn't know how to conduct science, and is not a scientist. So the N.I.H. has been put in the position frequently in the last year of having to re-justify research that has already been peer-reviewed, approved and funded."

Science has to suffer when the know-nothings come traipsing through the laboratories, infecting the research with their religious beliefs and political ideologies. Andrea Lafferty is the executive director of the Traditional Values Coalition, which she says represents more than 43,000 churches.

"What makes us unique among all the conservative groups," she said, "is that I believe we truly represent the body of Christ."

Ms. Lafferty said she personally gave the list of scientific researchers to Representative Billy Tauzin, a Louisiana Republican who is chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. One of its subcommittees has been reviewing the awarding of grants by N.I.H.

"We never said any grant on there was bad," said Ms. Lafferty. But she said she wanted to know why the grants were being funded, and why so many had to do with H.I.V. and AIDS.

Ms. Lafferty acknowledged that her group has a problem with homosexuality. "We're concerned that it's a behavior-based lifestyle, that you're not born that way," she said.

She insisted that the coalition does not oppose research on H.I.V. and AIDS, but added, "How many times do you have to study something to find out how to stop the spread of AIDS?"

The public officials who got their hands on this sinister list could have thrown it in the garbage. Instead, the list is circulating, like an insidious disease, and some scientists are worried that they are not immune.

Welcome to the Autumn Irony Festival

By Molly Ivins Creators Syndicate

Not that any of us is in a position to criticize the Great Scriptwriter in the Sky, but don't you think She's been going a little heavy on the irony lately?

All those folks who had conniption fits over Bill Clinton's affair are now pooh-poohing Arnold Schwarzenegger's sexual misconduct -- and vice versa.

The right-wingers who are always griping about Hollywood stars who express political opinions -- "Shut up and sing" -- suddenly find an actor perfectly fit for high political office based on his experience as The Terminator.

Professional patriots who would have been screaming with horror had the Clinton White House ever leaked the name of an undercover CIA agent now struggle to justify or minimize such a thing.

President Bush has spent $300 million trying to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and come up with zip, so now he wants to spend $600 million more. And let's mention the president's interesting theory that not finding any weapons of mass destruction means the Iraq war was fully justified. (Hello?)

Connoisseurs of political folly who have been enjoying the antics in California should not overlook the doings in the Great State, where Texas Republicans have achieved such a pluperfect snafu that the state's primary will be delayed next year.

The Iraqi Governing Council is complaining because the United States is wasting so much money in Iraq.

Rush Limbaugh is embroiled in a drug scandal.

Attorney General John Ashcroft demanded that federal prosecutors seek the maximum penalty in every case just before some perp(s) in the White House apparently broke the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, which carries a maximum of 10 years in prison.

All in all, a fine fall Irony Fest.

Less ironic and more in the sickening vein is the naked profiteering by various Bushies on the Iraq war. Bob Dole used to wander around the country demanding, "Where is the outrage?" Where's Dole when we need him?

Joe Allbaugh, who was part of Bush's "Iron Triangle" when he was governor and later as his presidential campaign manager and head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, is now in the Baghdad biz. Already the head of one consulting firm, Allbaugh and two partners -- both lobbyists and former aides to Poppy Bush -- have formed a new firm.

"The opportunities evolving in Iraq are of such an unprecedented nature and scope that no other existing firm has the necessary skills and experience to be effective both in the United States and on the ground." Salivating over unprecedented booty and swag while American soldiers are getting killed every day is considered kind of tacky in some circles.

A former partner of Douglas Feith, undersecretary of defense and a major player in pushing the war, has joined a nephew of Ahmed Chalabi, head of the Iraqi National Congress and apparently the source of much misinformation before the war. The nephew has opened a law office in Baghdad, and Feith's erstwhile law partner is marketing the firm in the United States.

Hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts have already been awarded -- without competitive bidding -- to American businesses, including Halliburton and Bechtel. Hey, no favoritism there. Appearance of impropriety? Don't be a churlish nitpicker.

Sen. Tom Daschle's office has documented the "gold-plating" of cost estimates in dozens of contracts. These include such gems as $6,000 each for handheld radios and satellite phones, as well as $200 million to protect
100 Iraqi families at an average cost of $200,000 per family member. The federal witness protection program costs $10,000 per person per year.

Although the main cellphone contract has yet to be announced, MCI has the preliminary contract. MCI has no experience in building cell networks -- and it also perpetrated the largest accounting fraud in history.

We're footing the $87 billion-and-counting tab (not including the $79 billion we already spent) for this venture, and the Senate Finance Committee has the chutzpah to consider granting a $100 billion tax break to corporations that make profits overseas. This dandy notion would permit American firms to "repatriate" overseas profits at a reduced tax rate of 5.25 percent rather than the current 35 percent. Now does anyone think that doing so might, just might, encourage more corporations to move their operations overseas?

El stinko to high heaven-o.