(not so disposable anymore)

So I’m half watching the McCain speech when I see this flash across the screen:

And besides making me sick to my stomach, I’d really like to know why? Why should special needs parents support Sarah Palin? Just because she has a little boy with Down syndrome is not reason enough to blindly throw your weight behind her. Because if you stop and look at the facts (I know, I know, I keep bringing those damn things up), you find things like this. And I can’t help but think about President Bush walking down the White House lawn to declare that he was going to support a Federal Marriage Amendment at the same time that his VP Cheney’s daughter and her lesbian partner were celebrating their pregnancy and soon after, their parenthood. See, that’s how they do, those Republicans. That’s why there’s a slogan that says It’s Okay If You’re A Republican. They take care of their own.

But if you don’t fit into their power structure, then they pretty much say “screw you.” It’s a rampant hypocrisy — Sarah Palin’s all for abstinence-only education but her daughter’s pregnant. Shrug. Bush/Cheney want to keep your same-sex partner out of the hospital if you get in an accident and think teh gays shouldn’t be adoptive parents, but Mary and Heather’s kid will never want for anything and is lovingly accepted into their arms. Shrug. Because IOKIYAR.

But work for me and my family? Not if all you’re talking about on the healthcare front is John McCain’s tax rebate and loosening restrictions on health insurance companies. Barack Obama’s plan will hopefully give more people access to healthcare, dropping actual premiums and prices — oh, and he’s also (so he says — and at least he’s saying it) going to work on not allowing insurance companies to discriminate based on existing conditions, like, say, Down syndrome. ‘Cause you see, Sarah, if you ever were to lose your sweet-ass governor job that comes with taxpayer-paid socialistic health coverage and have to buy insurance, you’d quickly find that little Trig wouldn’t be given coverage by anyone. Which is why my insurance company, in the middle of this recession, raised their rates for my family by 26% this year and all I can do is eat it. Because even the crappy insurance we’ve got is better than no insurance at all.

So don’t think that Sarah Palin feels your pain — she doesn’t. Like I said below, her pain and empathy receptors were removed (if she had any to begin with) when she joined the McCain ticket. Don’t believe me? Ask Trig how many times his mom has held him in the past week. Ask Trig why he’s been in an auditorium full of screaming banshee people late at night for the last twon nights when the tiny four-month-old should be alone with his parents and siblings as they try to help him figure out this crazy world he’s been thrown into. Hell, ask Bristol Palin how she feels having her mom announce her pregnancy and engagement to some hockey-playing high-schooler in front of the whole nation. Or ask Sarah Palin herself why she thinks it is that women — girls — should have to give birth to babies and then when they need help, find that the funding for aid to teenage mothers has mysteriously disappeared.

Oh, wait, that’s right, you can’t ask her, because she’s not taking questions.

So then ask yourself if Sarah Palin’s actions (and her party’s actions) back up her words, no matter how sweet they sound, no matter how nice it is to find that your little community is suddenly on the nation’s stage.

But come on, read the Dooce today at the very least.

Oh, Jon Stewart, how do I love thee…

Seriously, though, what does it say about the supposed liberal media when Stewart — a comedy-show host — is throwing the best punches? And it’s not like these are hard targets to hit even.

Sometimes it’s difficult for me to believe that little Trig Palin was born with extra genetic material, seeing as how his mother appears to be missing the genes for empathy, humility, and shame.

Though maybe that was a surgical maneuver required to become a part of the ticket, since Candidate McCain seems to have had a few parts of himself removed as well to become the Republican party’s presidential candidate.

Anyway, I know she wasn’t speaking to me, but I still can’t help but wonder who she was speaking to outside the convention hall and if her smug and demeaning tone is really the way to introduce yourself to a nation. What ideas did she present up there on stage? Where was a response to Obama’s call to rise above the bickering and actually speak to how we move forward as a nation and as a people? ‘Cause I missed that part. And if you’re interested in actual facts that repudiate much of what she said last night, check this out. Oh, or this, which especially notes how she helped to cut funding for special needs schools by 62% in Alaska. Way to be an advocate there, lady. Not that we should be interested in a pesky little thing called reality, right?

And again, as far as Barack’s speech goes, I was the right demographic for that one, but it still seems to me that he was speaking to everyone in America, regardless of party, whereas the Republican National Convention was about firing up the base and screw all the rest of you if you don’t like it, which appears to me to be their operational philosophy.

It will be very interesting to see what McCain says tonight.

Here’s how you can be an advocate for people with special needs babies, as you said in your speech tonight:

VOTE FOR BARACK OBAMA AND LET HIM WORK ON GETTING HEALTHCARE COSTS LOWERED.

I’ll have sooooo much more to say about this later, but I’m too mad to be coherent right now. I can’t believe her little boy is in that stadium right now. I can’t believe she’s trying to fucking pander to me right now from the party that has made discrimination of all kinds of people part of their platform and part of the way they right write laws.

(see, i said I was incoherent right now)

Variety has an article posted today about the lack of American male stars who are actually manly and how the only way actual manliness is represented onscreen right now is through foreigners (think Christian Bale, Hugh Jackman, etc.) I touched on this a long time ago (hey, four years is a long time in blogland), and while my list wasn’t specific to americans, I still think it holds up pretty well.

I’d also have to add a couple more overlooked TV guys to that list — both Matthew Fox and Josh Holloway bring the man action to Lost every week. And while I haven’t seen anything to prove Holloway can play anything other than Sawyer, Fox kicked serious ass in Speed Racer this year on the big screen and is now my personal choice to play the new revamped Superman (yeah, they’re rebooting it again), not that that will ever happen.

Though really, I just need Michael Mann to find some new men. And no, Colin Farrell doesn’t count. Mann tried really hard there, but it just didn’t happen for me. It’ll be interesting to see what he does to make Johnny Depp fit his archetype, though since his new movie is a period piece and probably won’t lend itself to stubble.

Whenever we’re out and about, for the most part Archer’s a very peaceful, quiet little guy. But he “talks” a lot when we’re at home, like he’s got some stuff to say and he needs to get it off his chest. This little episode came about while his mom and grandparents were out of the house sometime last week after a veritable slew of visitors and we were alone for the first time in quite some time:

I wonder sometimes these days about posting videos on the site– with still photos, it’s easier to edit, easier to pick out the things that make him seem cute or perfect or… I don’t even know, somehow not a typical T21 kid…or, if I’m honest with you, internet, not a kid with Down syndrome at all. Every once in a while it hits me that I’m posting this stuff out here for the world to see and not everybody’s going to see Archer the way that I do — as the perfect budge that he is. When it’s just us in our bubble — our house, our family, our friends — I can almost forget sometimes that he’s different, that he’s not doing the same things that other kids his age are doing, that he’s just going to see the world in a slightly different way. And while I try to think of ways to describe how other people might see him, I can’t even begin to figure that out.

And while that worries me some, I think it would be far more of a disservice to him to try and hide, to not put this stuff out here, to not show him off. ‘Cause amy and I are proud of him every day, even on the days where we get frustrated with the fact that we have to think about whether or not what he’s doing or how he’s playing is going to benefit his development, or — like today, he just really felt like flapping his arms a lot — if he’s doing something that might indicate something was wrong, even though 99% of the time it’s just him checking things out, figuring things out. Because really, he’s exactly where he’s supposed to be and doing whatever it is that he needs to be doing, no matter how difficult that can be to accept sometimes.

It’s like we live every day forgetting to breathe to our full capacity, because we always want to have a reserve of air in our lungs for when that next crack in the dam appears and the water comes crashing over our heads. It’s not a thing that’s easy to describe to people without feeling like you’re just complaining, without once again trying to dismiss it by saying, “oh, but there are so many people out there that have it much worse or who have gone through so much more.” And of course that’s true, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t suck around here sometimes. It does mean that nearly every day, at some point, even if just for a second, we wonder if we’re going to go under from the challenges he and we are going to face for, well, the rest of our lives.

The crack that appeared yesterday was the realization that there’s a possibility that Archer isn’t going to speak — I mean actual words, not the wonderful babble up in that video — until he’s 4 or 5 years old. I was reading this and it hit me that we’re going to probably deal with a delay of this type as well. It’s so easy to forget or deny these things when you’re trying to deal with the one day at a time– which is the way that this stuff (and life) has to be dealt with, really, but that sometimes makes these brief glimpses into the possible future even more of a sucker punch.

And it’s not the act of speech so much — though it’s that, too — but more the fact that he’s going to have all these things that he’s going to want to say and that I’m going to want to listen to…and he might not be able to get it out. I’m sure we’ll find alternate storytelling methods and I know already that he’s going to teach me some new languages and new ways to express stuff, but, man, sometimes it would be easier for us all if we didn’t have to learn all new methods for everything.

And this started off so innocently as just a cute video post ’cause I hadn’t done one of those in a while…

pretty amazing.

and funny as poop:

gotta love the spike.

If you don’t want to read the post below, just watch this– I’m not quite where Carlin is regarding language, but he’s a lot smarter than I am, so maybe I’ll get there someday:

found here.