The kid is at the end of 5th grade and will be going off to middle school next year. As part of “transitioning” he is getting 5 hours of HIV/AIDS education at school. So far I am not impressed with the quality, but being that I am hugely progressive on the issue of comprehensive sex education I doubt that any school program could include the kind of information I want my child to have.

I have a kind of no-censor policy when it comes to talking about sex with the kid. This doesn’t mean he gets graphic descriptions of my sex life, but that instead of doing that “shh, kids in the room” when non-personal discussions of sex come up I let them continue knowing that the kid is listening. I know that no matter how open I am about it, kids (particularly mine) are embarrassed about discussing this stuff with a parent. So I figure he’ll learn some stuff through osmosis of adult conversations and then I answer his questions honestly when he has them.

The easy part of the sex ed discussions is the biology. How are babies made, what changes is your body going to go through, what are std’s (after watching a commercial about HPV the other day I had to explain to the kid about the government withholding the HPV vaccine because they would rather see women die than have sex). But what is going to be more difficult is explaining the emotional and pleasurable aspects of sex.

I know one thing. When it becomes appropriate I am getting him this book. It’s a great how-to (and we all know that teenage boys, while having lots of enthusiasm, don’t often have a lot of skill).

But what about the emotional part? It would be hypocritical of me to tell him that he should only have sex when he’s in love (I don’t). But I don’t want him to discount the vulnerability of being naked in front of another person either. I’m gonna have to think carefully about how to present it to him so that he knows that sex is nothing to be ashamed of or embarrassed by but is also not to be treated lightly.

It’s the day before payday. I have $14.00 to my name and I am out of smokes. I am standing in line at the store to get smokes (because someone will DIE if I don’t have nicotine- not a threat, just a reality) . Then this little Economist cover catches my eye.

I had to buy it. The article is ho-hum. Who will be the Decider’s foreign policy buddy when Blair is gone? No one except maybe Angela Merkel of Germany (blah). It’s lonely at the top, but that’s what you get for being the feeble-minded cobag standing on a heap of shit that you’ve created.

UPDATE: Preliminary skimming of the Economist shows that spending $4.99 on strength of cover is not a good investment. Would have been a fine investment if stuck on plane (I always read the Economist and Atlantic Monthly on airplanes). In depth thing on Poland could be interesting.

Tonight was the finale of the West Wing and like a good little blue-stater I watched. It was mediocre as far as finales go, but I was still reminded that this was one of the only places on television for the last 8 years where my opinions were reflected back at me. Not in the news, or the talking head shows on Sunday, but in a fictional television show about the White House.

On the finale tonight, as the super-fast moving crews were cleaning out President Bartlett’s personal items, the camera lingered on a book by the French philosopher Michel Foucault. I don’t know which particular text it was, but just the fact that this fictional president would read a dense and difficult philosopher like Foucault is what resonates with me the most. The show didn’t treat us like we are idiots. The current administration and even the real Democratic Party do.

The most timely Foucault tome that could have come off that fictional president’s shelf would have been Discipline and Punish, which is about the creation of the panopticon state. In the last few weeks we have become aware of the extent the current administration will go to monitor and spy on Americans through the domestic wiretapping and gathering of phone records. Foucault was well aware of the extremes the state (and a subdued society within it) would go to in order to keep constant surveillance and control.

So our fictional president reads Foucault-a French, Gay, one-time communist philosopher- while our real president seeks to create the nightmarish state that Foucault envisioned and feared, has insulted the French, and is working hard to keep gays from having the right to marry and thinkers from having the right to think. Reality bites.

Maybe now that there is nothing on television that reflects our idealism and intelligence we can get to the hard work of finding a president who does think and read (My Pet Goat not included).

One more for mother’s day- then I promise to quit.
Lyrics from Sleater Kinney’s Step Aside

Will you come knocking on my door?
Pull me pick me off the floor
I might need something to get me going
Feel it one time
IT ROLLS
dig it
When I feel worn out
when I feel beaten
Like a used up shoe or a cake half-eaten
There’s only one way to keep on feeling
Move it up one time
IN TIME
dig it
This mama works till her back is sore
But the baby’s fed and the tunes are pure
So you’d better get your feet on the floor
Move it up one time
TO THE BEAT
These times are troubled these times are rough
There’s more to come but you can’t give up
Why don’t you shake a tail for peace and love
Move it up one time FOR LOVE
JANET CARRIE
CAN YOU FEEL IT
Knife through the heart of our exploitation
LADIES ONE TIME CAN YOU HEAR IT
Disassemble our discrimination
When violence rules the world outside
And the headlines make me want to cry
It’s not the time to just keep quiet
Speak up one time
TO THE BEAT

It’s mother’s day. Why the fuck isn’t someone bringing me a vodka tonic and lillies in bed with a nice side of some fried salty meat product? The Kid did go to the store all by himself and bring me donuts, but he forgot the half and half for coffee so I am mostly caffine free today. Blahhhhh.

But is this what mother’s day is really supposed to about? One day a year where we offer sappy, craptastic platitudes ala Hallmark so that we can forget everything they do the rest of the year. Just thinking about it makes me need a vodka tonic more than ever.

How about we go back the original idea of mother’s day. “What is that?” you may be thinking. Originally started by Julia Ward Howe as part of the Women’s Peace Crusade, the idea was that mother’s would no longer tolerate the death of their children in war or the death of the children on the other side of the battle.

In her own words:

Arise, then, women of this day!
Arise all women who have hearts, whether
your baptism be that of water or of fears!
Say firmly: “We will not have
great questions decided by irrelevant agencies,
“Our husbands shall not come
to us reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause.
“Our sons shall not
be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity,
mercy, and patience.
“We women of one country will be too tender of those of
another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.”
From the
bosom of the devasted earth a voice goes up with our own. It says, “Disarm,
Disarm!”
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice! Blood does not
wipe out dishonor nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often
forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all
that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them
meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them then
solemnly take counsel with each other as the means whereby the great human
family can live in peace,
And each bearing after her own time the sacred
impress, not of Caesar, but of God.

I will arise, just as soon as the Kid makes coffee. Really, I’m gonna get to it.

Crooks and Liars Just takes you to the SNL website- but someone has put up the video at Youtube. Go watch it there.

Al Gore is on SNL as the president in an alternative universe where gas is down to 19 cents a gallon because cars run on trash instead.

Ahhhhhhhhh. I miss him. I want to live in that alternate universe, even if giant glaciers are on theattack and California is part of the new country of Mexifornia.

And in this world, Bushy is the baseball commisioner.

Quick- somebody Youtube the clip. Please, pretty please.

UPDATE: Crooks and Liars has the clip- go watch it!

Newsweek is reporting that Cheney was obsessed with Joe Wilson after Wilson wrote in the NY Times about the yellowcake falsehoods. Cheney’s notes (written in the margins of the newspaper article Wilson wrote) show that Cheney maybe much more central to the leak investigation than has previously been made public.

A CIA employee for 20 years, Mary McCarthy, who was fired for allegedly talking to the press, is sure that CIA people are lying when they claim no knowledge of torture and abuse of prisoners.

Rove is about to be indicted. Dusty Foggo had his house searched by the FBI.

Illegal wiretapping and data mining are just the tip of the iceberg in constitutional violations. But we will never know more because the Justice Department can’t get security clearance to investigate the wiretapping, effectively making the investigation pointless.

Bush’s approval ratings are at 29% (before the phone call data mining story came out).

And still the dems in power sit on their fucking hands. Pelosi has said that impeachment is off the table.

All I can say is Impeach The Mother Fucker Already! ITMFA!

The Seattle Times has a brief (and by no means comprehensive) article about the state of the economy, or how is it that record setting stock markets and profit margins aren’t making people feel better about the economy.

Experts agree that U.S. economic growth exceeds historic norms. In late April,the Commerce Department reported a sizzling first-quarter annual growth rate of4.8 percent in gross domestic product (GDP), the broadest measure of theeconomy. Unemployment, at 4.7 percent, hovers near all-time lows.

Like I said- it’s the disparity stupid!

The same week that the robust GDP numbers came out, the government also reported that worker compensation pay and benefits increased in the first quarter at an annual rate of only 2.4 percent, the slowest rate in seven years. That figure, Bernstein said, suggests that workers’ wages aren’t keeping pace with gains during past economic expansions.

So wages aren’t keeping up with inflation (nothing new there), employers don”t want to pay higher wages because they 1) have to keep up with globalization and 2) are paying more towards healthcare (all while employer provided healthcare is becoming more rare- 45% of Americans don’t have health insurance at all).
Let’s look at some numbers:
In 2004 (the last year that census numbers aravailablebe for) the number of people living in poverty rose to 12.7% or 37 million people. That was the 4th straight year in a row that the number went up. The US also has the largest percentage of people living in poverty in the developed world. How’s that for the American dream? (And why do I have to get my numbers from British newspapers?)

The minimum wage of $5.15 an hour has not risen since 1997 and, adjusted for inflation, is at its lowest since 1956.

The top 20 per cent of earners take over half the national income. At the same time the bottom 20 per cent took home just 3.4 per cent

The United States has 269 billionaires, the highest number in the world

These statistics all use the government’s guidelines for poverty thresholds which haven’t been changed since 1955 and don’t include health care, child care, housing and transportation (according to Duke Professor David Brady– who may have to go on my hot brains list). If Brady’s numbers were used instead, the poverty rate is closer to 17%.
But back to the Seattle Times article. If we are in an economic boom with low unemployment- why aren’t wages climbing faster?

“As the expansion progresses, wages tend to catch up to productivity growth, and eventually the growth rate of wages exceeds that of productivity. … We are moving into that phase,” Lazear told the Hudson Institute, a conservative policy-research center.

However:

Martin Regalia, chief economist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said he thinks the economy will slow in the second half of this year.

So if the economy is looking at a near-future slowdown and wages have yet to catch-up, what happens next?

And what about the middle class (I should put that in quotes since the middle class is on it’s way to Dodo level extinction). Yet another article in the Seattle Times claims that middle class families are going into debt not by racking up expensive purchases like plasmaTVs, but on basics like housing and healthcare.

In the past five years, the costs of medical care, housing, food, cars and household operations rose 11.2 percent, the study said. Many families are trying to make up the difference by borrowing, said Christian Weller, author of the report and a senior economist at the center. “Very little can be explained by frivolous consumer spending,” Weller said.

How screwed up does our country have to be that there are record corporate profits while average families are going deeper into debt just trying to maintain their lifestyle? We have levels of economic disparity in this country that haven’t been seen since right before the Great Depression, and war spending isn’t pulling us out of the hole this time.