A Riding Vacuum Cleaner:)

Image by itspaulkelly via Flickr

Today was a shopping day which included the purchase of a new vacuum cleaner. I procrastinate these kinds of purchases because I hate spending over 200.00 on an item that isn’t in anyway fun. For that kind of money I could buy an iPod Touch or one of those under the cupboard television sets with the screen that flips down; you know fun. I planned to purchase one last year but didn’t which meant that buying one this year was a must.

Since I wasn’t going to get anything remotely entertaining I picked a Hoover WindTunnel vacuum cleaner. This particular model was the small canister type that I could use on carpet or wood floors but the real clincher to the deal was that it looked like I could sit on it and scoot from room to room if I was so inclined. This made the Hoover WindTunnel the perfect choice  because the  purchase was both functional and fun (wink).

Link Found Between Alzheimer’s & Mad Cow Protein

Image by publicenergy via Flickr

Bernadette Tansey, Chronicle Staff Writer

Thursday, February 26, 2009

(02-25) 19:56 PST — The latest in a recent flurry of clues on the workings of Alzheimer’s disease comes from Yale University researchers who found a link between the disorder and the prion protein, which can cause mad cow disease and other maladies

The Yale team found that the prion protein, whose normal function is to maintain brain health, may contribute to nerve damage if it becomes entangled with a protein fragment that scientists consider a chief suspect as a cause for Alzheimer’s disease.

Full Story

Related articles by Zemanta

• Prions in Milk (microbiologybytes.wordpress.com)
• Scientists sniff out prion secret (news.bbc.co.uk)
• Scientists warn of first ever case of human mad cow disease from blood plasma (telegraph.co.uk)
• Scientists fear second wave of human BSE may kill up to 350 (guardian.co.uk)

My Comments to CNN Headline News

Constantly calling Nadya Suleman Octo-Mom is purposely dehumanizing. So Nadya Suleman is dysfunctional, unrealistic and she lied to her mom but unlike you HLN folks, she isn’t vicious, malicious and I don’t see her chewing up the weak. When your expert tried to point out her strengths you shut him down then went on beating your cannibal drum over Suleman’s obvious frailties.

Seriously, if her short comings were grounds for child protection then a large cross section of the population would be in foster care. What is it in our society that we are so eager to chew up those who are clearly weak, fragile and fall short. Nadya Suleman isn’t an alcoholic, drug addict, she isn’t abusive and she is clearly far from being perfect. So what. Our society has score of children living with parents who are addicted and violent. While her mental health is a concern, raising children in poverty isn’t a crime. I’ve seen as many rotten kids raised by economically stable and well-to-do families as I have poor ones.

Take your torches and pitchforks after the tax sucking Wall Street bankers, their character and short comings should be under the microscope. Given their recent conduct how fit they are to raise children, clearly they too are dishonest embezzlers who have no sense of responsibility or reality. Even worse they demonstrate abject contempt for the whole of society… or does money make a lack of reality and moral fiber more palatable?

It’s Never Good

Image by mike912mueller via Flickr

I hate it when I fall asleep with the TV on, I always end up waking up at the crack of dawn to news that irritates me to the point that I can’t go back to sleep. Who knows maybe it isn’t the news maybe I’m just that crabby at 4 A.M., it is possible. Nonetheless, I fell asleep to Anderson Cooper and woke up to the CNN guy who broadcasts before the CNN girl, Jane whatever-the rest-of -her-name-is.

I don’t feel compelled to give either  middle of the night CNN anchor a full name because they keep calling Nadya Suleman “Octo-Mom”.  I’m not condoning Nadya’s decision making,  defending her competence or that of her doctor but calling her “Octo-Mom” is a deliberately dehumanizing gesture on the part of the media and it only serves to feed into the public hate-frenzy surrounding her as did both programs.

At the crack of dawn  Broadcast-Jane’s CNN program showed a clip of Nadya Suleman arguing with her mother. The first time the clip was played long enough for viewer to hear Suleman tell her mother that she needed to “let go”  as the clip played on Suleman completed her thoughts by connecting that statement to her decision to have all 8 babies. Essentially what Suleman was telling her mother was that the babies are already here and that she can’t change what’s already happened and Suleman was asking her mother to let go of an issue that could no longer be changed.

Call me crazy but I thought that it was an entirely rational response, Suleman can’t go back and make a different decision. Whether her parents or the public agree or disagree the babies are indeed here and continuing to berate her for her decision making won’t change history and certainly won’t improve anyone’s situation.

But what CNN’s Broadcast-Jane did after that was to only play the clip long enough to hear Suleman tell her mother that she needed to “let go”, without giving the statement any context and making it appear as though Suleman was telling her mother to let go of her grandchildren all together. Naturally Broadcast-Jane’s professional guest panel ripped the statement apart having taken her statement completely out of context.

Later Broadcast-Jane’s program showed a clip of Suleman kissing the cheeks of one the older twins while she held him drinking his bottle. One of  members of Broadcast-Jane’s expert panel called the  Suleman cheek kissing “inappropriate.”  Seriously? I witness what I would deem inappropriate every time I go shopping, an overdose of chubby cheek kissing and raspberry belly-blows would be a very welcomed change!

My question is this, how would the media have depicted her if she would have just sat there? Disconnected, unresponsive…I think we all know that no matter how Suleman responded no one was going to depict her in a fair light, let alone a favorable light. None of the experts seemed to note  the body language of the baby she was holding. It certainly wasn’t the first time that child had been held and rocked while he drank his bottle. He relaxed into her like the position was familiar, he made eye contact with her and he looked healthy, well, relaxed and happy, all of her kids did.

If Sulemon belongs under a microscope then so does every low income or slightly dysfunctional person in the country. We condone the Duggers issuing a new baby every year and their up to baby 18, seriously how much does Mr. Dugger earn without television and advertising?  How much of their family’s help with younger children comes from older sibling? What about the John Gosselin from John and Kate Plus Eight…when they decided to give birth to all 6 babies did they know how they were going to afford to care for all of them?  Didn’t they take incredible risks to the childrens health by not reducing the number? When their babies were born did they have a big enough house for 6 cribs? How many embryos were implanted in Kate to make 6 babies and who paid for her postpartum plastic surgery?

I’m sorry Broadcast-Jane but if kissing the chubby cheeks of babies is “inappropriate” then I’m perpetually out of line and my friend Mary Strohmayer. who is a mother of 5,  is a criminal! She comes from a family of 5 rambunctious brothers, has 5 children of her own, is dying to be a grandmother and has nieces and nephews stacked to the ceiling, I know for a fact that she also shamelessly kisses chubby cheeks because I’ve witnessed it more at her house than in any other home I’ve ever been in.

The bottom line is, whether we agree or disagree the babies are here and we all need to let go and move on. If you object to what happened write to your Congressman and have a bill drafted that establishes stricter guidelines for fertility clinics. But to call Suleman’s baby kissing inappropriate and in the same breath ignore the conduct of the scores of people camped out and following Suleman to shouting obscenities and scream about tax payer dollars. What kind of experts are these to object to cheek kissing and over look cruel malicious behavior? What kind of a a hate filled society do we live in and why are we so willing to rip the weak to shreds.

What makes it all even more perplexing  is the fact that a massive group of completely rational, financially secure   Wall Street bankers just ripped American tax payers off for billions. I don’t understand why tax concerned hate-mongers aren’t shouting at them from Wall Street, screaming for the return of unearned bonus money and their resignations! Frankly I think they are by far more deserving of our public outrage. Watching Bernie Madoff  smirking at the media as he makes his way to his penthouse lights my fuse in a way that Suleman’s food stamp mony never will. Isn’t the money going straight back intot he economy because its ALL getting spent on food at her neighborhood grocery store? And the billions given to banks…well part of our economic issue stems from the fact that they’re not loaning out the money so it isn’t helping the economy.

Again, I’m not saying I agree or condone but I think all perspective has been seriously lost, and I think in a number of ways Sulemoan is being demonized by the media as seen on Jane Velez Mitchell’s program.  Suleman may be dysfunctional and misguided but you’ll find that among any group of parents, she isn’t hurtful, she isn’t malicious and her children are at ease and well.

Related articles by Zemanta

• If You Believe Every Media Outlet, Nadya Suleman Has Earned $0 From This Octuplet Saga (jossip.com)
• OctoMom’s Ex Says He’s OctoDad! (laist.com)
• Octo-Mom on Frozen Embryos: “You Use Them Or You Destroy Them” (jossip.com)

Tweeters in US Government

For full  details or more up to date information check out: Source Watch

Legislative Branch: U.S. Senate

• Votes from the Senate floor

1. Barbara Boxer (D-CA)
2. Tom Coburn (R-OK)
3. Susan Collins (R-ME)
4. John Cornyn (R-TX)
5. James DeMint (R-SC)
6. Chris Dodd (D-CT)
7. Richard Durbin (D-IL) (unofficial)
8. Chuck Grassley (R-IA)
9. Kay Hagan (D-NC)
10. James Inhofe (R-OK)
11. Mel Martinez (R-FL)
12. John McCain (R-AZ), presidential candidate in 2008
13. Claire McCaskill (D-MO)
14. Robert Menendez (D-NJ)
15. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) (unofficial)
16. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), former NH Governor
17. Mark Udall (D-CO)
18. Tom Udall (D-NM)
19. Mark Warner (D-VA)
20. Roger Wicker (R-MS)

---

Legislative Branch: House of Representatives

• Votes from the House floor
• House Republican Conference Committee
• House Republican Policy Committee

1. Neil Abercrombie (D-HI)
2. Michelle Bachmann (R-MN)
3. Gresham Barrett (R-SC)
4. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR)
5. Roy Blunt (R-MO), Minority Whip
6. John Boehner (R-OH), Minority Leader; also runs GOP Leader
7. John Boozman (R-AR)
8. Michael Burgess (R-TX)
9. Dan Burton (R-IN)
10. Eric Cantor (R-VA)
11. John Carter (R-TX)
12. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT)
13. Mike Coffman (R-CO)
14. John Culberson (R-TX)
15. Steven Driehaus (D-OH)
16. Keith Ellison (D-MN)
17. Mary Fallin (R-OK)
18. Jeff Flake (R-AZ)
19. Randy Forbes (R-VA)
20. Virginia Foxx (R-NC)
21. Marcia Fudge (D-OH)
22. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI)
23. Mike Honda (D-CA)
24. Jim Jordan (R-OH)
25. Randy Kuhl (R-NY)
26. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH)
27. Tom Latham (R-IA)
28. Robert Latta (R-OH)
29. Ben Lujan (D-NM)
30. Dan Manzullo (R-IL)
31. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA)
32. Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI)
33. Cathy McMorris (R-WA)
34. Kendrick Meek (D-FL)
35. Candice Miller (R-MI)
36. George Miller (D-CA), also runs Educ & Labor Democrats
37. Ron Paul (L-TX)
38. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Speaker of the House
39. Jared Polis (D-CO)
40. Tom Price (R-GA)
41. George Radanovich (R-CA)
42. Dennis Rehberg (R-MT)
43. Dave Reichert (R-WA)
44. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL)
45. Tim Ryan (D-OH)
46. Joe Sestak (D-PA)
47. Christopher Shays (R-CT)
48. John Shimkus (R-IL)
49. Zach Wamp (R-TN)
50. Joe Wilson (R-SC)
51. Rob Wittman (R-VA)
52. John Yarmuth (D-KY)

Bon Appetit

Image via Wikipedia

I spent most of my day yesterday in St. Cloud.  My mother wanted to shop for clothes and I frequently join her because  I’m good at breezing through  a store and plucking items off the rack to pull together outfits. A nd I also remember what she looked at on previous shopping trips so when she says, “oh, I like that.” I can say, “you looked at it last time we were here and they don’t have your size.” She typically doesn’t believe me and will check the tags only to discover that… they don’t have her size, then she looks at me suspiciously.  I’ve often envied my mother for this because she’s able to look at the same items with first-sight delight whereas I feel I’ve seen it before, because I have.

Yesterday I grabbed a black jacket that I thought would be great cut on her, maybe a bit more fashion forward than she typically goes but I thought she’d be sold on the way it looked on her. At first she frowned at it and said she didn’t like it. I frowned back and said, humor me. So she he tried it on then bought it.

By the time we finished shopping my mother had amassed over $300.00 in clothing for $50.00. In addition to the black jacket she also purchased a suede coat for $7.49, its original price was around $79.00 and a double breasted gray wool coat for $29.99, originally priced at $200.00, it was a good day.

After shopping we typically eat out, I was on a schedule so we decided to skip our favorite establishments and eat at Arby’s in the mall. As my mother and I ate a woman came in coughing like she had TB and she naturally took a seat close to me.  After coughing up a lung she began blowing her nose. I try to accept the fact that people are different but I honestly don’t have the stomach for that and certainly not while I’m eating, my mother was less phased than I was and finished her sandwhich. I stopped short and as the coughing and blowing continued I excused myself opting to meet my mother in the mall, lest my stomach turn inside out.

I don’t know what it is with this particular Arby’s but on one other occassion, while I was eating with Nick and Alexa, a woman pulled her toddler from the bathroom with a bare bottom and stood him next to the trash where she finished cleaning his bottom with paper towels. Naturally I was sitting directly across from her work area and I found it so off the charts offensive that I wanted to fall over laughing. I just kept thinking, you cannot possibly be serious!

The trash had one of those hinged openings so she was pushing poopy paper towels though the opening to throw them away. The really astonishing part was that an employee witnessed the butt mopping in the dining area and did nothing, she didn’t even disinfect the opening on the rubbish bin. I wondered about the people who dined later and pushed open that very door… with their hand. Both instances made me wonder about the cleanliness of fast food estabishments, especially when the tables aren’t washed regularly…ish.

A Page From Alexa’s Journal

February 18th, 2006 Alexa’s father died. To mark the one year anniversary last year I posted the tribute that she  wrote for for his funeral. Since then Alexa has written more about surviving loss and living with chronic illness.

Since today marks the second year I have provided a link to the tribute she wrote and read at his funeral and I’m also posting the following tilted:  My Angel

“There is one person who  has gotten me through all the hardships in my life, all those nights I cried, all those days I thought that ending my life would be easiest on everyone.  My angel was the one who stopped me and she has been my best friend since birth. Complete opposites, she is wild and crazy and I am quiet and withdrawn. I watch life and she lives it. Her name is Kalli; she is my cousin, my best friend and my guardian angel.

My father had always looked at Kalli as a second daughter, so when I found out he had died I wanted to be the one to tell her.  Even amidst of our tears, anger and pain Kalli did what she always did, she made everything better. Within minutes of the horrible news she had me laughing so hard that I had forgotten what had happen. With lines like: “Well maybe you can get a puppy now” and “Do you think they’re naked in heaven since you don’t need clothes up there?” She never fails to make me smile even on days when it seems impossible.

At my Fathers wake Kalli never left my side, always there to hold my hand and to hold me when another sob rattled though my body. I remember not being able to take it anymore and I tried so hard to hide it but Kalli knew. Quietly she weaved me through the crowd and outside onto the sidewalk where I collapsed into a ball. I laid my cheek onto the cool concrete with Kalli sitting next to me brushing the hair away from my face and telling me it would all be okay. Like always, she was right. What would I have done if she hadn’t been there? If I would have stayed in that room crowded by people. What would I have done if she wasn’t there to hold me and keep me from collapsing to my knees, the thought still cross my mind.

I had written a speech to read at the funeral, everyone was unsure telling me I would most likely not be able to read it, that I would stop in the middle of it crying. But Kalli, like always, was there telling me that I could and I did. When the pastor called my named to come to the podium and start the speech, silently Kalli and I walked up hand in hand and faced the hundred people who came to mourn. Throughout the speech she stood behind me quietly sniffling and every second when I was sure I was going to quit, she  knew and squeezed my hand giving me the strength I needed to keep going.

I will always remember going to a grief group with my grandmother, I of course brought Kalli with me. We sat in the group shy, practically sitting on top of each other. I never noticed it before, but the people in the group became interested in how Kalli and I acted, how when she moved I  moved at the same time, without thinking about it, we fit together like a puzzle. Sometimes, I don’t think we are aware that we are two separate people when we are together.

At one point during the session a lady looked at us with such sadness in her eyes, she had lost her son a few years back, and she said, “you two are so lucky to have one another, to be so close. I wish I had some one like that in my life.”
It dawned on me that she was right, Kalli and I are closer than anybody I know. We remind me of twins, how they are said to be connected in a way and there is no question that Kalli and I are. I don’t think her and I will ever grow apart, she was sent to help me through my life and I was sent to help her.” – Lexx

 

I’ll close this post with a note to my daughter, an excerpts from the essay, “As I Stand Here Ironing” by Tillie Olson

“I stand here ironing, and what you asked me moves tormented back and forth with the iron…when is there time to remember, to sift, to weight to estimate, to total? I will start and there will be an interruption and I will have to gather it all to gather together again. Or I will become engulfed with all I did or did not do, with what should have been and what cannot be helped…There is still enough left to live by. Only help her to know-help make it so there is cause for her to know that she is more than this dress on the ironing board, helpless before the iron.”

 

American Banking Oligarchs: Bill Moyers Journal

PBS Transcript:

February 13, 2009

BILL MOYERS: Welcome to the Journal.

The battle is joined as they say — and here’s the headline that framed it: “High Noon: Geithner v. The American Oligarchs.” The headline is in one of the most informative new sites in the blogosphere called: baselinescenario.com. Here’s the quote that grabbed me:

“There comes a time in every economic crisis, or more specifically, in every struggle to recover from a crisis, when someone steps up to the podium to promise the policies that — they say — will deliver you back to growth. The person has political support, a strong track record, and every incentive to enter the history books. But one nagging question remains. Can this person, your new economic strategist, really break with the vested elites that got you into this much trouble?”

Full story and podcast

Related Media from PBS website:

James Galbraith
Bill Moyers sits down to talk about the economic future with James K. Galbraith, Lloyd M. Bentsen, Jr. Chair in Government/Business Relations at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. Galbraith is the author of six books, the most recent, THE PREDATOR STATE: HOW CONSERVATIVES ABANDONED THE FREE MARKET AND WHY LIBERALS SHOULD TOO. (October 24, 2008)

George Soros
Bill Moyers talks with one of the world’s most successful investors George Soros about the global capital meltdown, how he saw it coming, and what can be done now. (October 10, 2008)

Kevin Phillips on BAD MONEY
Bill Moyers sits down with former Nixon White House strategist and political and economic critic Kevin Phillips, whose latest book BAD MONEY: RECKLESS FINANCE, FAILED POLITICS, AND THE GLOBAL CRISIS OF AMERICAN CAPITALISM explores the role that the crumbling financial sector played in the now-fragile American economy. (September 19, 2008)

Joe Nocera
JOURNAL guest-host Deborah Amos speaks with NEW YORK TIMES business columnist Joe Nocera about the bailout mania in Washington and who’s next in line to get federal assistance. (November 21, 2008)

Winners and Losers
NEW YORK TIMES business and financial columnists Gretchen Morgenson and Floyd Norris discuss who wins and who loses in the financial turmoil. (September 19, 2008)

Facing up to the Economy
Bill Moyers talks with economist Dean Baker and journalist Bob Herbert about the economic challenges facing the government and the populace. (August 8, 2008)

Mortgage Mess
THE JOURNAL travels to ground zero of the mortgage meltdown — Cleveland, Ohio. Correspondent Rick Karr takes viewers to Slavic Village, one of the hardest hit neighborhoods in the nation when it comes to the spate of foreclosures caused by the subprime mortgage crisis. (July 18, 2008)

References and Reading from PBS website:

“Geithner Said to Have Prevailed on the Bailout”
By Stephen Labaton and Edmund L. Andrews, NEW YORK TIMES, February 9, 2009.

“Bank Test May Expand U.S. Regulators’ Role “
By Eric Dash, NEW YORK TIMES, February 11, 2009

“Bailout Plan: $2.5 Trillion and a Strong U.S. Hand”
By Edmund L. Andrews and Stephen Labaton, NEW YORK TIMES, February 10, 2009.

“Congressmen Hear from TARP Recipients Who Funded Their Campaigns”
by Lindsay Renick Mayer, CAPITAL EYE, February 10, 2009.

“So what is the plan?”
By Mark Thoma, THE ECONOMISTS VIEW, February 10, 2009.

“Special Report: A World of Trouble”
Get up-to-date international news and perspective from GlobalPost.

Simon Johnson

“Axelrod And Emanuel Were Right (On The American Bank Oligarchs)”
By Simon Johnson, THE BASELINE SCENARIO, February 10, 2009.

“High Noon: Geithner versus the American Oligarchs”
By Simon Johnson, THE BASELINE SCENARIO, February 8, 2009.

“Baseline Scenario for 2/9/2009 (11pm edition, February 8)”
By Peter Boone, Simon Johnson, and James Kwak, THE BASELINE SCENARIO, February 9, 2009.

“Global Economic Outlook (Senate Testimony)”
By Simon Johnson, THE BASELINE SCENARIO, January 29, 2009.

Published February 6, 2009.

Related Links:

Financial Crisis for Beginners

Naked Capitalism

Related articles by Zemanta

• Galbraith on the crash… it has a familiar ring (money.cnn.com)
• More on Moyers – plus J. Edgar Hoover on how to spot a homosexual. (slate.com)

Happy Valentines Day!

Happy Valentines Day

Baking, Santana & Chad Kroeger

Baking artisan bread to Santana & Chad Kroeger.