Having To Say Goodbye Is Never Any Fun

We had to put our Chessie down this evening, Maggie had a seizure about 8:30 tonight and we had to rush her to the Emergency Vet and it was clear she was not coming out of it.

We had not planned much for the evening just dinner and a movie with the family, so at least we were home when it happened.

She was 10 years old had been having health issues these past 18 months being diabetic.

Maggie was the name sake for this little blog, as I grabbed the domain name curlydog.com shortly after we brought the curly little furball home, the wife used the site to sell her pencil drawing for several years until I usurped it for this blog.

She was a good girl and will be missed. As Molly grew up Maggie was always her watchful guardian until her eyes went from diabetes induced cataracts, she would lie against the fence watching Molly and her friend play in the backyard for hours.

Here's a few shots of Maggie with her little girl.

Happy New Year !!!!

I hope everyone has a Happy and Safe New Years eve. I look forward to sharing my observations of the days events in the coming year.






Free Comments and Graphics

Didn't Work Out So Well For Bristol Now Did It?

The scary thing is the facts won't matter to the wingnuts, they have decided in their little pea brains that abstinence only education will work so in their minds it is working, just like high stakes testing and "no child left behind".

Premarital Abstinence Pledges Ineffective, Study Finds

Teenagers Who Make Such Promises Are Just as Likely to Have Sex, and Less Likely to Use Protection, the Data Indicate

By Rob Stein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, December 29, 2008; A02

Teenagers who pledge to remain virgins until marriage are just as likely to have premarital sex as those who do not promise abstinence and are significantly less likely to use condoms and other forms of birth control when they do, according to a study released today.

The new analysis of data from a large federal survey found that more than half of youths became sexually active before marriage regardless of whether they had taken a "virginity pledge," but that the percentage who took precautions against pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases was 10 points lower for pledgers than for non-pledgers.

"Taking a pledge doesn't seem to make any difference at all in any sexual behavior," said Janet E. Rosenbaum of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, whose report appears in the January issue of the journal Pediatrics. "But it does seem to make a difference in condom use and other forms of birth control that is quite striking."

The study is the latest in a series that have raised questions about programs that focus on encouraging abstinence until marriage, including those that specifically ask students to publicly declare their intention to remain virgins. The new analysis, however, goes beyond earlier analyses by focusing on teens who had similar values about sex and other issues before they took a virginity pledge.

"Previous studies would compare a mixture of apples and oranges," Rosenbaum said. "I tried to pull out the apples and compare only the apples to other apples."

The findings are reigniting the debate about the effectiveness of abstinence-focused sexual education just as Congress and the new Obama administration are about to reconsider the more than $176 million in annual funding for such programs.

"This study again raises the issue of why the federal government is continuing to invest in abstinence-only programs," said Sarah Brown of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy. "What have we gained if we only encourage young people to delay sex until they are older, but then when they do become sexually active -- and most do well before marriage -- they don't protect themselves or their partners?"

James Wagoner of the advocacy group Advocates for Youth agreed: "The Democratic Congress needs to get its head out of the sand and get real about sex education in America."

Proponents of such programs, however, dismissed the study as flawed and argued that programs that focus on abstinence go much further than simply asking youths to make a one-time promise to remain virgins.

"It is remarkable that an author who employs rigorous research methodology would then compromise those standards by making wild, ideologically tainted and inaccurate analysis regarding the content of abstinence education programs," said Valerie Huber of the National Abstinence Education Association.

Rosenbaum analyzed data collected by the federal government's National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, which gathered detailed information from a representative sample of about 11,000 students in grades seven through 12 in 1995, 1996 and 2001.

Although researchers have analyzed data from that survey before to examine abstinence education programs, the new study is the first to use a more stringent method to account for other factors that could influence the teens' behavior, such as their attitudes about sex before they took the pledge.

Rosenbaum focused on about 3,400 students who had not had sex or taken a virginity pledge in 1995. She compared 289 students who were 17 years old on average in 1996, when they took a virginity pledge, with 645 who did not take a pledge but were otherwise similar. She based that judgment on about 100 variables, including their attitudes and their parents' attitudes about sex and their perception of their friends' attitudes about sex and birth control.

"This study came about because somebody who decides to take a virginity pledge tends to be different from the average American teenager. The pledgers tend to be more religious. They tend to be more conservative. They tend to be less positive about sex. There are some striking differences," Rosenbaum said. "So comparing pledgers to all non-pledgers doesn't make a lot of sense."

By 2001, Rosenbaum found, 82 percent of those who had taken a pledge had retracted their promises, and there was no significant difference in the proportion of students in both groups who had engaged in any type of sexual activity, including giving or receiving oral sex, vaginal intercourse, the age at which they first had sex, or their number of sexual partners. More than half of both groups had engaged in various types of sexual activity, had an average of about three sexual partners and had had sex for the first time by age 21 even if they were unmarried.

"It seems that pledgers aren't really internalizing the pledge," Rosenbaum said. "Participating in a program doesn't appear to be motivating them to change their behavior. It seems like abstinence has to come from an individual conviction rather than participating in a program."

While there was no difference in the rate of sexually transmitted diseases in the two groups, the percentage of students who reported condom use was about 10 points lower for those who had taken the pledge, and they were about 6 percentage points less likely to use any form of contraception. For example, about 24 percent of those who had taken a pledge said they always used a condom, compared with about 34 percent of those who had not. (my bold)

Rosenbaum attributed the difference to what youths learn about condoms in abstinence-focused programs.

"There's been a lot of work that has found that teenagers who take part in abstinence-only education have more negative views about condoms," she said. "They tend not to give accurate information about condoms and birth control."

The Years Best YouTube Videos

The Huffington Post rates the top ten videos of 2008.

I had seen all but this one and it is just too cute.

He's Back - Snowzilla Rises Again

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Someone has told the city of Anchorage what it can do with its cease-and-desist order to prevent Snowzilla - the giant snowman - from rising up again this winter in an east Anchorage neighborhood.

Snowzilla - thought to be no more - is yet again. Someone again built the giant snowman in Billy Powers' front yard. Snowzilla reappeared overnight.

Powers is not taking credit. When questioned Tuesday afternoon, he said Snowzilla just somehow happened, again.

However, he will tell you what Snowzilla means to him, a father of seven, and the children in the neighborhood.

"The snowman is about having all these kids, a lot of kids with big smiles on their faces," he said reached by telephone at his home, the sound of excited children in the background.

For the last three years, Snowzilla to the delight of some and the chagrin of others has been a very large feature in Powers' front yard. In 2005, Snowzilla rose 16 feet. He had a corncob pipe and a carrot nose and two eyes made out of beer bottles.

This year, Snowzilla is somewhat smaller. He's wearing a black stovepipe hat and scarf.

For several years, Snowzilla has risen in the front yard of Powers' modest home. His children - he has five still at home - collected snow from neighbors' yards to make the snowman big enough. Each year, Snowzilla got a bit bigger.

Not everybody in the neighborhood liked all the cars and visitors who came to see him.

City officials this year deemed Snowzilla a public nuisance and safety hazard. A cease-and-desist order was issued. The city tacked a public notice on Powers' door.

City officials said the structure increased traffic to the point of endangerment and that the snowman itself was unsafe.

When the order was issued, the partially-built snowman was dismantled, becoming a pile of snow rubble. Powers said he didn't plan to rebuild.

The mayor's office on Tuesday issued a statement defending its move against Snowzilla.

"This property owner has repeatedly ignored city attempts to find ways to accommodate his desire to build a giant snowman without affecting the quiet, residential quality of the neighborhood," the statement from Mayor Mark Begich's office said.

"This is a neighborhood of small homes on small lots connected by small streets. It can't support the volume of traffic and revelers that are interested in Snowzilla."

Merry Christmas !!!!

My little one playing Mary with her Grandma playing Mary's Mother in the church Christmas play this year!

I Keep Telling You - We Removed The Wrong Repressive Middle East Regime

Saudi court tells girl aged EIGHT she cannot divorce husband who is 50 years
her senior

A Saudi court has rejected a plea to divorce an eight-year-old girl married
off by her father to a man who is 58, saying the case should wait until the girl
reaches puberty.

The divorce plea was filed in August by the girl's divorced mother with a
court at Unayzah, 135 miles north of Riyadh just after the marriage contract was
signed by the father and the groom.

Lawyer Abdullar Jtili said:"The judge has dismissed the plea, filed by the
mother, because she does not have the right to file such a case, and ordered
that the plea should be filed by the girl herself when she reaches puberty."

StarTribune - Election Widget - Franken Leads!!

You Just Can't Make This Shit Up

Anchorage Daily News

Levi Johnston's(Bristol's Baby Daddy)mother arrested on drug charges


WASILLA -- A 42-year-old Wasilla woman was arrested Thursday at her home by Alaska State Troopers with a search warrant in an undercover drug investigation. Sherry L. Johnston was charged with six felony counts of misconduct involving a controlled substance.

Johnston is the mother of Levi Johnston, the Wasilla 18-year-old who received international attention in September when Gov. Sarah Palin and her husband, Todd, announced their teenage daughter was pregnant and he was the father. Bristol Palin, 18, is due on Saturday, according to a recent interview with the governor's father, Chuck Heath.

Troopers served the warrant at Johnston's home at the "conclusion of an undercover narcotics investigation," said a statement issued Thursday by the troopers as part of the normal daily summary of activity around the state.

Troopers charged Johnston with second-degree misconduct involving a controlled substance -- generally manufacturing or delivering drugs -- as well as fourth-degree misconduct involving controlled substances, or possession.

Boy what a great second family that would have been!

Now You Can Toss Shoes AT "w" Too!

http://www.sockandawe.com/

Can't Make This Up - I Have A New Hero

Obama Cabinet Lacks Diversity - Puts Only Smart People In Charge

OMG - How dare he only hire smart people to run our government, how are all the graduates of Regent University Law School going to support themselves if the government won't hire them.

Academic elites fill Obama's roster
Critics worry about insularity as Ivy League graduates crowd cabinet posts
Barack Obama's chief economic adviser was one of the youngest people to be tenured at Harvard and later became its president. His budget director went to Princeton and the London School of Economics, his choice for ambassador to the United Nations was a Rhodes scholar, and his White House counsel hit the trifecta: Harvard, Cambridge and Yale Law.

All told, of Obama's top 35 appointments so far, 22 have degrees from an Ivy League school, MIT, Stanford, the University of Chicago or one of the top British universities. For the other slots, the president-elect made do with graduates of Georgetown and the Universities of Michigan, Virginia and North Carolina.

While Obama's picks have been lauded for their ethnic and ideological mix, they lack diversity in one regard: They are almost exclusively products of the nation's elite institutions and generally share a more intellectual outlook than is often the norm in government. Their erudition has already begun to set a new tone in the capital, cheering Obama's supporters and serving as a clarion call to other academics. Yale law professor Dan Kahan said several of his colleagues are for the first time considering leaving their perches for Washington.

"You know how Obama always said, 'This is our moment; this is our time?' " Kahan said. "Well, academics and smart people think, 'Hey, when he says this is our time, he's talking about us.'"

'Best and brightests' carry risks
But skeptics say Obama's predilection for big thinkers with dazzling résumés carries risks, noting, for one, that several of President John F. Kennedy's "best and brightest" led the country into the Vietnam War. Obama is to be credited, skeptics say, for bringing with him so few political acquaintances from Illinois. But, they say, his team reflects its own brand of insularity, drawing on the world that Obama entered as an undergraduate at Columbia and in which he later rose to eminence as president of the Harvard Law Review and as a law professor at the University of Chicago.

His inner circle is rife with Harvard Law classmates: Christopher Lu, who will be his Cabinet liaison; Cassandra Butts, who was a campaign policy adviser and is general counsel for the transition; and other transition officials including Julius Genachowski, his campaign's top technology adviser, Michael Froman, a managing director at Citigroup, and Thomas Perrelli, a Washington lawyer.

The Ivy-laced network taking hold in Washington is drawing scorn from many conservatives, who have in recent decades decried the leftward drift of academia and cast themselves as defenders of regular Americans against highbrow snobbery. Joseph Epstein wrote in the latest Weekly Standard -- before noting that former president Ronald Reagan went to Eureka College -- that "some of the worst people in the United States have gone to the Harvard or Yale Law Schools . . . since these institutions serve as the grandest receptacles in the land for our good students: those clever, sometimes brilliant, but rarely deep young men and women who, joining furious drive to burning if ultimately empty ambition, will do anything to get ahead."

The libertarian University of Chicago law professor Richard Epstein, who is not related to Joseph Epstein, worries that the team's exceptionalism could lead to overly complex policies. "They are really smart people, but they will never take an obvious solution if they can think of an ingenious one. They're all too clever by half," he said. "These degrees confer knowledge but not judgment. Their heads are on grander themes . . . and they'll trip on obstacles on the ground."

All agree that the picks reveal something about Obama, suggesting he will make decisions much as he did in the U.S. Senate -- by bringing as many smart people into the room as possible and hearing them out. This contrasts with the style of President Bush, who played down his own Ivy League credentials and played up his mangled elocutions and the gentleman's C's he received at Yale and Harvard. While Bush brought in a few academics, such as former Stanford provost Condoleezza Rice, he relied heavily on his Texas associates and business executives outside the Ivy League echelons he encountered in his schooling.

Caribou Barbie - Took Some Work To Clean Her Up!

McCain Campaign Spent $110,000 on Palin’s Stylists

Gov. Sarah Palin’s traveling makeup artist was paid $68,400 and her hair stylist received more than $42,000 for roughly two months of work, according to a new campaign finance report filed with the Federal Election Commission.

Ms. Palin’s makeup artist, Amy Strozzi — who was nominated for an Emmy award for her cosmetics work on the television show “So You Think You Can Dance?” — was paid $32,400 by Senator John McCain’s presidential campaign between Oct. 16 and Nov. 24, the period covered by the most recent reports filed with the commission.

This amount came on top of the $36,000 she had already been paid in previous reports, dating back to September.

In addition, Ms. Palin’s traveling hair stylist, Angela Lew, was paid a total of $42,225, with $23,400 coming during the period covered by the latest reports to the commission, which were due at midnight on Thursday.

You have to admit though, the folks they hired were good, have you seen her public appearances since?

Taser Tag - Let's Get The Pallbearer - He's Busy, He'll Never See it Coming...

NC undercover officers use Taser on pallbearer

WILMINGTON, N.C.—Five sheriff's deputies will be disciplined after they used a Taser while serving an arrest warrant on a man at his father's funeral, a North Carolina sheriff said Wednesday.
Gladwyn Taft Russ III was serving as a pallbearer at the Saturday service and was loading his father's casket into a hearse when the undercover deputies approached him.

Relatives said two deputies dressed in coats and ties grabbed Russ and kneed him in his back before using a Taser on him. One deputy's gun fell out of its holster.

"Everybody was so scared. We thought it was a drug deal gone bad," said Ronnie Simmons, another pallbearer and Russ' brother-in-law. "We almost dropped the casket."

New Hanover County Sheriff Sid Causey told The Star-News of Wilmington that five of the officers involved would be disciplined, although he wouldn't say what punishment they would face.

"I apologize to anyone that was there," Causey said. "Family, friends, relatives. ... That was a bad decision."

Russ, 42, had failed to surrender after being charged with threatening his ex-wife, who lives in another state. After his father died on Nov. 11, Russ agreed to surrender to authorities after the funeral.

When deputies approached Russ, he "went wild" and spat on the officers, Chief Deputy Ed McMahon said.

Russ was charged with assault on a government official, resisting an officer, disorderly conduct and felony malicious conduct by a prisoner.

I love how they always add a bunch of charges based on the activity after the cops did the stupid shit. I can just hear the conversation at the station house.

"Hey we got us an out of state warrant for Gladdy Rush here, didn't his daddy just die."

"Yeah I saw the obit in the paper this morning, funeral is this afternoon"

"Might be a good place to pick ol' Gladdy up, I'm sure he will be at his daddy's funeral"

"Well we might want to wait until after the church service, don't want a bunch of bad press about arresting him in the church and all."

"I bet if we wait until they're loading the casket into the hearse we can sneak right up on him."

"Yeah, that would work but we better all put some coats and ties so we blend in"

You Didn't See Anything...............

Governor's office: Troopergate is over and Palin testimony won't be released to public

As far as Gov. Sarah Palin is concerned, Troopergate is behind her and she won't provide a transcript of testimony she gave in an investigation into whether she violated ethics laws in firing her public safety commissioner, Walt Monegan.

Palin has maintained she did nothing wrong and that Monegan was dismissed for reasons unrelated to her concerns about her ex-brother-in-law, Trooper Michael Wooten. She had called Wooten a "trooper time-bomb" and complained to Monegan in an e-mail that Wooten had tasered his stepson, drank in his patrol car, and shot a moose without a permit, and yet was still on the street.

Her husband, Todd, as well as officials in her administration, pressured Monegan and others at the Department of Public Safety about Wooten. Monegan has said he believes he was fired in part because he wouldn't get rid of Wooten, and one investigation into the matter came to the same conclusion.

Palin cooperated with only one of two investigations into the circumstances of Monegan's dismissal, the one by the state Personnel Board, which she said was the proper venue for an ethics investigation and which cleared her, not the separate investigation by the state Legislature, which found she abused her power by failing to rein in Todd and others, but still had the right to fire Monegan.

When the Personnel Board investigation began, Palin said she wanted it made public.

"The people of Alaska -- and of the nation -- deserve to have a decision from the proper tribunal putting their minds at ease that suggestions of misconduct that have circulated on the Internet and in some media outlets are not true. I therefore am waiving the confidentiality that usually covers personnel board complaints," Palin said in a statement released by her lawyer, Thomas Van Flein, on Sept. 2, just days after she was named John McCain's running mate.

She gave her only testimony in the matter on Oct. 24 while on the vice presidential campaign trail. Van Flein said at the time that she wanted to release a transcript of her deposition. Reached Thursday evening, Van Flein said he hadn't talked to Palin about releasing it since then. "That's their call, I guess," he said.

Palin is simply ready to move on, her deputy press secretary, Sharon Leighow, wrote in an e-mail exchange this week.

"This matter is closed. We see no public purpose in artificially prolonging this controversy," she wrote initially.

Then, Leighow went a bit further:

"Governor Palin waived her confidentiality to release the Personnel Board report - not her deposition. Two investigations concerning this matter have been conducted and concluded; we are not going to relitigate this in the media now. The politics are over and behind us. In both investigations, the investigators found that the Governor acted with her proper and lawful authority in dismissing Walt Monegan. We are moving forward now and not looking back at a matter, which has distracted Alaskans from the key issues at hand; the price of oil, the state of our budget, and resource development in Alaska, including the ultimate construction of a natural gas pipeline."

The governor's office also refused to release a transcript of Todd Palin's deposition and other key documents that were part of the Personnel Board investigation, but not included as attachments to the official report.

The governor's office wouldn't provide copies of e-mails, some to Sarah or Todd, that were sent in the days before an infamous call by Palin aide Frank Bailey to a trooper lieutenant about Wooten. In the call, which was recorded, Bailey said "Todd and Sarah are scratching their heads. You know, why on Earth hasn't, why is this guy still representing the department?" Palin has said she never authorized the call. The e-mails are not public because of reasons including "executive privilege," "the governor's office said.

The governor's office also declined to release notes from a meeting of Palin administration officials in which Wooten's return to work after an injury was discussed. The notes relate to a confidential personnel matter, the governor's office said.

To Protect And Serve

In rush-hour labor, ticket delivered
Jennifer Davis was stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic on Nov. 18, her contractions just 3 minutes apart. Her husband, John, was trying to appear calm for his wife's sake, driving in the breakdown lane of Route 2. They pulled up behind a state trooper to ask whether they could continue using the lane to reach the next exit, near Alewife Station.

Not only did the trooper say no, he gave them a $100 citation for driving in the breakdown lane, made them wait for their citation while he finished writing someone else's ticket, and even seemed to ask for proof of pregnancy, Jennifer Davis said.

"He said, 'What's under your jacket?' I said, 'My belly,' " Davis said. "He waited and gestured with his head like, 'OK, let's see it.' He waited for me to unzip my jacket. I mean, it was so clear that I was pregnant."

The jerk even made "worst person in the world", so he's got that going for him.