See here for details!

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Many people have asked why we don't have kids and aren't planning on them for a while.

Other than "It's none of your business," which most people don't appreciate, try this on for size:

California would become the first state to explicitly ban spanking for children younger than 4 under legislation to be introduced next week.

Slapping, smacking, whacking or kicking also would be outlawed.

Assemblywoman Sally Lieber, a Mountain View Democrat who is crafting the measure, said corporal punishment victimizes helpless children and contributes to a society "addicted to violence."

[...]

"To my mind, there's no amount of physical force that's appropriate on a child 3 years old or younger," Lieber said.

h/t Darleen

Posted by: caltechgirl at 01:31 PM | Comments (9) | Add Comment
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It's Friday, and you know what that means.....

Be sure to drink your ovaltine check out the comments for the incredible definition of "whale humpers"

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Oil prices slipped to below $50 per barrel briefly today.

So why am I still paying the same $2.599 for gas as I was when it was $65/barrel?

F*ckers.

Posted by: caltechgirl at 08:19 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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This is just wrong on so many levels:

A group of Methodist ministers from across the nation launched an online petition drive Thursday urging Southern Methodist University to stop trying to land George W. Bush's presidential library.

The petition, on a newly created Web site, http://www.protectsmu.org, says that "as United Methodists, we believe that the linking of his presidency with a university bearing the Methodist name is utterly inappropriate." [emphasis mine -Ed.]

I guess it only applies to liberals.  F*cking hypocrites.

I am done with the United Methodist church.  DONE.  Period.

See, I grew up in the UM church.  My Dad is a lay minister in the church.  We were married in a UM church.  But no more.  I stopped going to church a long time ago, for a variety of reasons, but I always loved the UM church for its very laissez faire approach.  Gay?  No problem.  Divorced?  No problem.  Female?  Who cares?

I would agree with these "pastors" if they were excluding him on the grounds that he had done something famously immoral.  A church (or church-sponsored school) shouldn't associate itself with someone immoral.  But because you don't like his politics?

Give me a f*cking break.

It's a church, people.  CHURCH.  Politics stops at the f*cking door.  Not to mention that it is located in central Texas, Mrs. Bush went there, and the Bushes are IN FACT Methodists.

You never would have heard a PEEP from them if it was Clinton's library.  And we all know the things HE did that ministers are supposed to frown upon.....

Posted by: caltechgirl at 12:00 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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The Newhall Pass over the infamous Grapevine into Southern California is closed due to blizzard conditions.

The storm struck shortly before 9 a.m.

"It was a cell that hit us. We had no idea that it was coming, it just hit us all at once," [CHP Officer Dave] Pokorny said.

Stranded motorist Ernest Eckhardt he thought he could make it through the blizzard.

"It was kind of raining and it turned to sleet and I thought, 'Well, the rest I can go,' but then it turned bad quickly," he said. "It just dropped so much snow and the water on the road froze and the snow on top of it was just too slick."

Posted by: caltechgirl at 02:04 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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It was emanating from the NJ statehouse...

"For World War II veteran Sam Stia, a legislative proposal that would cease requiring New Jersey schools to teach about Veterans Day and Memorial Day can be summed up in two words.

"That's wrong," Stia, 83, said Thursday from his Hamilton home, where he flies an American flag at half-staff to honor fallen soldiers. "We're just giving our flag away and our patriotism away."

Stia and other veterans are steamed about the proposal, which the state lawmakers unanimously passed last month and now awaits action by the governor. It was included as part of a larger measure designed to help control property taxes, mostly by abolishing some laws on school purchasing and public hearings.

Other holidays about which schools no longer would be required to teach include Columbus Day, Thanksgiving, Arbor Day and Commodore Barry Day, which commemorates Revolutionary War hero John Barry.

New Jersey schools must observe the holidays under a 1967 law designed to promote "the development of a higher spirit of patriotism." Florida, Nebraska and Washington are among states with similar laws."

If you're a Jersey taxpayer (Jimbo, Kate, et. al.) maybe you should let your reps know how unacceptable this is.

Posted by: caltechgirl at 02:31 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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14 members of the Carter Center Board of Councilors resigned today in protest of Jimmy Carter's recent views on Israel.  In response to Carter's book, "Palestine: Peace not Apartheid.", the 14 councilors wrote:

"We can no longer endorse your strident and uncompromising position," the letter to Carter said. "This is not the Carter Center or the Jimmy Carter we came to respect and support."

"We are deeply troubled by the president's comments and writings and are submitting the following letter of resignation to the Carter Center,"

"[abandoning his] historic role of broker in favor of becoming an advocate for one side." and "[confusing] opinion with fact, subjectivity with objectivity and force for change with partisan advocacy,"

Kenneth Stein, the first Executive Director of the Carter Center resigned a month ago over this same book.

Perhaps Mr. Carter should re-think his strategy here.  Continuing to be "relevant" will do far less for his legacy than returning to his roots in fair-dealing. 

Or maybe he's tired of hiding his true colors.

Update: This brings to 16 the number of advisors that Carter's book has alienated. Professsor Melvin Konner declined the honor even before joining the committee, saying in part:

"I am now carefully rereading parts of this very puzzling and problematic book, having read it through once quickly. I am not going to point out again here all the mistakes and misrepresentations pointed out by others (to take just one example, his flat contradiction of the accounts by President Clinton and Dennis Ross of events at Camp David at which they were present and he was not)˜none of which he has answered—nor explain the grotesque distortion caused by his almost completely ignoring Jewish history between ancient times and 1947 (he devotes five lines on page 64 to that millennial tragic story and mentions the Holocaust twice; his "Historical Chronology" at the outset contains nothing˜nothing˜between 1939 and 1947). However, I will call your attention to a sentence on p. 213 that had not stood out for me the first time I read it: "It is imperative that the general Arab community and all significant Palestinian groups make it clear that they will end the suicide bombings and other acts of terrorism when international laws and the ultimate goals of the Roadmap for Peace are accepted by Israel."

As someone who has lived his life as a professional reader and writer, I cannot find any way to read this sentence that does not condone the murder of Jews until such time as Israel unilaterally follows President Carter's prescription for peace. This sentence, simply put, makes President Carter an apologist for terrorists and places my children, along with all Jews everywhere, in greater danger. "-- Emphasis mine, Ed.

Posted by: caltechgirl at 01:04 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Reports surfaced today that Barry Bonds failed a random drug test sometime during the last baseball season.  However, because he tested positive for amphetamines, and not steroids, he faces no play restriction for a first offense.

Of course, Barry and his people have no comment.

What kind of BS is that?  Use of amphetamines without a valid prescription is illegal.  And in baseball, evidently it only merits a warning.  A first positive steroid test is 50 games.

I guess we know what Baseball's priority is:  CYA rather than player health.

And then, because Barry is such a nice guy, he blames a teammate, Mark Sweeney, claiming that he took a pill out of Sweeney's locker (whether Sweeney gave it to him or not is not clear in his story) and THAT pill turned out to be amphetamine.

Sweeney says he NEVER gave Bonds anything, never had amphetamine in his possesion anywhere, and most importantly, has NEVER tested positive for any banned substance.

Funny that.

And what kind of idiot takes pills out of someone else's locker without knowing what they are?

A drug seeking addict, that's who.

Barry, just go home.  Now.  Really.  It's becoming painful to watch you flush your life down the toilet.

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She who SHALL NOT be named, on her photo-op trip with the Code Pinkos to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba to protest the treatment of prisoners is ignoring an opportunity to do just that.

Anti-war activist C**** S****** is ignoring an appeal by wives and mothers of imprisoned Cuban political dissidents for her to visit Cuban prisons during her trip this week to protest the treatment of suspected terrorists held at Guantanamo Bay.

The Damas de Blanco, or Ladies in White, who march silently through the streets of Havana every Sunday in protest at the incarceration of political prisoners of the Castro regime, wrote a letter to Ms. Sheehan inviting her to visit Cuban prisons.

The Damas drew Ms. SheehanÂ’s attention to the poor state of Cuban prisons, which they say lack clean drinking water and adequate food and where their relatives are imprisoned solely for speaking out against Fidel CastroÂ’s government.

"It just so happens that this is where the [ Guantanamo] prisoners are," Ms. Benjamin [Code Pink leader] said. That the group is visiting Cuba, where prisons define daily life for many, is "very incidental," she added.
[emphasis mine -Ed]

(picture from Flap)

h/t Flap

Posted by: caltechgirl at 12:19 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Here are some facts:

1.  Donald is a publicity whore
2.  Barbara Walters is a publicity whore
3.  Rosie is a bitch

I have no dog in this fight, so I'm not going to pull any punches.  I am 100% certain that this started as a publicity stunt and now it has spiraled out of control.  Someone needs to quit cheerleading for one side or the other (like Joy Behar does.  sheesh) and be THE ADULT and tell these three children to quit whining over who gets the nice toy and who is the biggest poopyhead.

At this point they are ALL poopyheads.

As to the criticisms of Donald for calling Rosie a pig, in that a man shouldn't call a woman a pig....

Well why the fuck not?  The post-modern feminists tell us that there's no difference between the sexes, so why is it ok for Rosie to ching-chong his combover but he can't attack her?

And frankly, she is a pig.  She's a fat, indulgent, arrogant hypocrite.  Actually, calling her a pig insults pigs.  Pigs are smarter and friendlier.  They don't judge based on cash in your wallet.

And Barbara Walters probably IS a liar.  I have no doubt that she did say those things about Rosie, that it IS difficult for her to deal with having Rosie on the show, that she dislikes the sharp political rhetoric Rosie brings with her.  And maybe she's afraid her comfortable women's chat show is about to become a referendum for the Liberal Lesbian Agenda.

That's the thing with Rosie, she is DEFINED by her political agenda.  She assumes immediately that EVERYONE is out to get her because she is out of the closet (e.g. Kelly Ripa).  That somehow her sexual identity makes her odious to the rest of us.  That EVERY straight person who dares to disagree with her is doing so because she's a lesbian.

As fucking if.


Maybe she thinks that because somewhere in her own psyche SHE is truly uncomfortable with herself, for whatever reason, and she is projecting that on to others.

On this same page I have specifically defended, nay, applauded her right to live with the partner of her choice and co-parent her 4 children.  I love that she has a committed relationship and brings the values of that relationship to the rearing of her kids.  I love that her kids have two parents.

And yet, I call her a pig.  She's not an arrogant hypocrite because she's gay.  She's an arrogant hypocrite because she's willfully ignorant.

But Donald doesn't get out of this clean either.  He picked this fight, and then he added fuel to the fire.  Probably in an attempt to raise the buzz for the newest season of the Apprentice, which started this week.  He is a smart and savvy businessman, and probably thought that getting his name out there would improve his audience numbers.  But it clearly backfired.  And now a lot of people think he's a dickhead for calling her a pig.

Honestly, my sympathies lie with Donald.  Of the three, he has the most honest and respected reputation.  People who know him will tell you that he treats everyone equally and can be fair to a fault because his motivators are not personal, only business.  Barbara is well known as a manipulator, and Rosie is widely considered a bitch to all but a select (rich and famous) few.

And for the record, aren't there more important things to discuss on TV all day?  Like the war, for instance?

Posted by: caltechgirl at 12:02 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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Go Beavers!

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Get 'em Kitty!

Posted by: caltechgirl at 04:49 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Anyone who was part of one of the AIDS debates at DW knows this one is true:

My Peculiar Aristocratic Title is: Her Eminence the Very Viscountess Caltechgirl the Sophisticated of Wallop upon Deane Get your Peculiar Aristocratic Title

Posted by: caltechgirl at 10:48 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Or more appropriately, Attention Target Returners. Especially those of you who got gifts without gift receipts.

Look, you all know how much I love Target.  Not any more.  Some of you know how strong a statement that really is.

According to Vanessa, "manager" of store 1417 in Fresno, Target's return policy is that if you DO NOT have a receipt for that item, any return is only issued as a "suspended transaction" and you can only purchase:

THE SAME ITEM or a similar item
ON THE DAY OF THE RETURN
AT THAT STORE

This means that you may only purchase an item from that particular department. In my case, kitchen electronics. If you want to buy clothes or shoes or something and you returned a blender. Yep, sorry. You can't. But would you like a deep fryer?

Without a receipt they place SERIOUS restrictions on what you can get for a return. AND if it's over $100, good luck sucker. The lady next to me at the return counter was returning a PSP someone gave her son. They told her that they couldn't even take it.

Even worse was the father whose son had received a jacket he really liked but was too small.  The kid wanted the same jacket, but this store didn't have his size EITHER.  They couldn't give him a gift card to go to the other Target in town and get one.  AND the jacket had already gone back to the floor while he was shopping, so they wouldn't give it back to him and void the return.  When I left he was warming up to get as pissed off as I was.

As far as I know, Target is the ONLY store that restricts what you can spend your return $$ on after returning a new, unopened, fully functional item.

Kind of ironic when their signs promise "EASY RETURNS!  EVEN WITHOUT A RECEIPT!"

In fact none of this policy (as it was explained to me) is even ON their website.  Here's the sum total of what it says regarding store-purchases returned with out a receipt:

Don't have your receipt?

In most instances, Target stores can verify purchases made within the last 90 days on a store account, third-party charge account, check or GiftCard using our unique Receipt Look-up system.

Refunds to a Store - Gift Recipient

Form of Payment: Your refund will be issued as a GiftCard good for purchases made at Target stores and on Target.com.

Posted by: caltechgirl at 04:33 PM | Comments (12) | Add Comment
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But you can't take him to church.

Sorry, David Stern.  Bullshit fines aren't the answer.  All 7 of the suspended players should face the same punishment as Ron Artest.  If you want them to play nice, make so that they play nice or don't play at all.

Dammit.

Posted by: caltechgirl at 11:28 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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The horror was DOCUMENTED.  On paper.  It's all there.  17 miles of file cabinets containing Nazi records on everything from head lice to mail records to executions...

17,000,000 victims: Jews, laborers, homosexuals, and political dissidents.

The documents are being scanned and will be available within the next year to a number of research programs and libraries.

Posted by: caltechgirl at 07:54 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Go see what Earthlink made Rachel go through just to NOT fix her problem.

But don't forget to call her first to verify that you are, in fact, reading her page.

Posted by: caltechgirl at 04:27 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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Ban Ki-moon was sworn in today as the 8th Secretary General of the United Nations, officially ending the decade-long term of his predecessor, Kofi Annan.

Today, Mr Ban pledged to "be mindful of... loyalty, discretion, and conscience" and to "set the highest ethical standards..."

Even if all he does is remind people that taking bribes is a bad thing, he'll already be miles ahead of Mr. Annan's repugnant term at the helm.

The Wall Street Journal's Opinion Journal reminds us of the words and deeds of the UN under Annan's direction:

...When Mr. Annan was named Secretary General 10 years ago, he did so as the U.S.-backed candidate of reform. Jesse Helms, then-chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told Mr. Annan that "if you choose to be an agent of real and deep-seated change, you will find many supporters--and even allies--here in the U.S. Congress."

Senator Helms's expectations were not met. Seven years later--thanks to U.S. military action that Mr. Annan did everything in his power to prevent--we learned that he had presided over the greatest bribery scheme in history, known as Oil for Food. We learned that Benon Sevan, Mr. Annan's trusted confidant in charge of administering the program, had himself been a beneficiary of Iraqi kickbacks to the tune of $160,000. We learned that Mr. Annan's chief of staff, Iqbal Riza, had ordered potentially incriminating documents to be destroyed. We learned that Mr. Annan and his deputy, Louise Frechette, were both aware of the kickback scheme but failed to report it to the Security Council, as their fiduciary duties required. However, we haven't yet learned whether the senior Annan illegally helped his son Kojo obtain a discounted Mercedes, an issue on which the Secretary General has stonewalled reporters.

Earlier this year, Mr. Annan was also forced to place eight senior U.N. procurement officials on leave pending investigations on bribery and other charges. Vladimir Kuznetsov, the head of the U.N. budget-oversight committee, was indicted this year on money-laundering charges. Alexander Yakovlev, another procurement official, pled guilty to skimming nearly $1 million off U.N. contracts. The U.N.'s own office of Internal Oversight found that U.N. peacekeeping operations had mismanaged some $300 million in expenditures.

...

Mr. Annan came to office after a stint as head of U.N. peacekeeping operations. The period corresponded with the massacre in Srebenica of 7,000 Bosnians and the genocide of 800,000 Tutsis in Rwanda, both of which were facilitated by the nonfeasance of peacekeepers on the ground. It was later revealed that Mr. Annan's office explicitly forbade peacekeepers from raiding Hutu arms caches in Rwanda just four months before the genocide.

The world's worst man-made humanitarian catastrophes have since taken place in Zimbabwe, North Korea, Congo and Darfur. Mr. Annan has been mostly silent about the first two, perhaps on the time-honored U.N. principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of member states other than the U.S. In the Congo, U.N. peacekeepers haven't stopped the bloodshed, but they have made themselves notorious as sexual predators.

These are the facts, folks.  Under Annan's "leadership" the UN has failed.  In Darfur, in Congo, in Somalia.  In Kosovo and Rwanda and the middle east.  And these failures can all be traced to one person: Kofi Annan.

In a global community the objective SHOULD be the protection of human rights and promotion of tolerance and communication.  Under Annan, the UN's objective appeared to be "anything that makes the US look bad". 

By default, that attitude prevents the neediest among us (like the Darfuris) from receiving the help that would otherwise be freely offered.

Ask the Kosovars.

Mr Annan has singlehandedly brought the UN from an organization of hope, that had the possibility of effecting real global change to a mockery of its former self.

Opinion Journal says it more eloquently than I can:

Mr. Annan came to power at a moment when it was at least plausible to believe that a properly reformed U.N. could serve the purposes it was originally meant to serve: to be a guarantor of collective security and a moral compass in global affairs. Mr. Annan's legacy is that nobody can entertain those hopes today.

h/t Lex

Posted by: caltechgirl at 12:56 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Or, How the Very Expensive Plumber f*cked up....

So our next-door neighbor, a lovely woman who I will refer to as "JoAnn" has been having some trouble with her hot water heater. Including a hell of a flood last week. Good thing we have clear drainage. She decided to replace it sooner rather than later, and sooner turned out to be yesterday. As she told me last night, she chose the most expensive plumber to do the replacement simply because he had a reputation for NOT screwing things up.

In any case, JoAnn works strange hours. Like she leaves the house between 10 and 11 in the morning, and usually returns after 9 at night. So in this case, she left them the spare garage door opener to get access to the garage, where the water heater lives, with the understanding that they would bill her and close the door after the new machine was up and running.

One thing about the garage. JoAnn's garage and ours are under our respective houses and are connected by a walkway and a staircase that leads to each of our back doors. So you can enter either of our garages from the other. This, in fact, is why we knew in advance about the repair. She wanted to let us know that strangers would have access to our garage. No big deal, unless of course they like to steal empty cardboard boxes or Army uniforms. Or laundry detergent.

So I leave the house at 6:30 am, husband in tow, and drop DH at work before I go on to my own office. I had meetings and things all day yesterday, culminating with a staff meeting/ party. So I don't get home until 6:30 PM. All I wanted to do was address Christmas cards and veg in front of the TV. And go to bed early.

Did I mention I left here at 5:30? Fucking LA trafffic.

Anyway. By the time I arrived home it had been at least 3-4 hours since anyone had been in either garage. I pull into the driveway and roll down my window for the garage opener (which has a weak ass signal) and as the door opens, I smell something.

By the time I pull in and turn the car off, I know what it is: Gas. Immediately I go into panic mode. I run out on to the driveway and dial the house, meanwhile yelling at DH to pick up the phone. He picks up the phone and I ask him to open the back door and tell me what he smells. He concurs that it is gas and rings off to call JoAnn's cell.

In the meantime I have recovered sufficiently to realize that if I could drive into the garage that there's not enough gas to flash over, so I go over to JoAnn's garage and hit the button to open the door and turn off the light in my garage and then back the car out and park it on the street.

DH then went down to the HOA reps' house and asked about the shut offs, and she brought out the gas wrench, and we turned off JoAnn's gas at the main. Within 10 minutes, all of the gas had cleared.

I'll find out from her this afternoon why this happened, whether it was a blown pilot light or a loose connection or what.

Scary, though.

Posted by: caltechgirl at 12:50 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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