Tuesday, December 26, 2006

The Brotherhood

I found the following policy changes from China vis-à-vis adoption for single parents (really single women as few single men ever adopt, even through they’ve had the ability to do so for decades now) rather interesting. It followed very closely on the heels of other countries such as England and the Netherlands banning the use of anonymous sperm donors anymore (they are now illegal in both places).

So this is just continuation of the hate campaign against women in their role as mothers as men continue their ongoing attempts to be in charge of everything again.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/20/us/20adopt.html?pagewanted=print

Clearly listening to the 'spin' emanating on a daily basis from the western media about how horrible mothers are (particularly single mothers, but they are targeting all mothers ultimately with this propaganda), how many of us murder our children, abandon them regularly to homeless men (as the current movie “The Pursuit of Happyness” would have us believe), how insignificant the mother/child bond is compared to say a male penguin bonding with an egg, or a sperm donor with a dixie cup, all of this propaganda and spin, going unchallenged for the most part, led to the recent turnabout in China’s adoption policy.

The same way it incited England and the Netherlands to outlaw anonymous sperm donors a year or so back.

Now, of course, every woman in either of those countries wishing to become a mother, without the requisite male overseer being put in charge of her, will have to leave these places to seek out donors elsewhere. This will probably lead to more sickness being spread amongst the general populations there, as many other countries that allow anonymous sperm donors aren’t as careful about testing for various blood-borne diseases as England or the Netherlands probably was.

It will probably also lead to more women becoming pregnant through one-night stands and just refusing to identify the recreational sperm donor. Since remember even going to the trouble and expense of using a sperm bank is really a ‘tip of the hat’ to women’ ethics in this area, trying to avoid involving a sperm donor in the expense of raising a child he had no wish to create. It’s not something women need to continue doing, if it becomes too much trouble and expense for them to bother with.

Additionally, it will lead to further drops in populations in the west, as women will continue not having children under the threats of these ongoing custody wars incited by men. Most of these custody/legalized abduction actions instigated to relieve men of the financial responsibility of fatherhood. Anyway, that’s the real motivation behind women using all of these extraordinary processes to have children: anonymous sperm donors, single parent adoptions of foreign orphans, etc. It is women in their ongoing attempts to try and head off some stingy cheapskate/control freak from having any legal rights to her children. To short-circuit the use of the power of the state to harass and terrorize her and some poor kid for up to 18 or so years, if not permanently…

Last, but not least, even though many women here don’t want to face this part, it will eventually lead to the same thing happening in the US of A. It’s just a question of time really. The writing is on the wall (in spite of the many highly publicized stories about celebrities such as Mary Cheney being allowed to impregnate herself, probably via an anonymous sperm donor) this is not an option that is going to be available much longer for women in this country.

Ideas have consequences, as this latest example of the reaction to single women from the west adopting their unwanted population of girl children in China has shown us.

As I, for one, don’t think for a moment that this policy was changed due to the best interest of those orphans. China, as a society, has shown its complete lack of regard for its female population many times. Even the fact that most of the those orphans are girls shows the low regard that their society places on women to begin with, that’s why baby girls are abandoned in the first place. Since the one-child policy has been put in place, everyone wants a boy. Thus a girl baby is tossed out like an old pair of shoes in the nearest ditch, so a mother can be allowed a ‘do-over’ and try for a boy with a second pregnancy. Actually now that they have sonar technology, many in China just abort a girl fetus as soon as it’s identified, so the whole Chinese orphan situation can pretty much become a moot issue in a few years anyway.

Anyhow single women adopting these little girls and bringing them to the west to raise them had little or no impact on China overall. Other then saving some girls from either death or a miserable existence, once they become adults in a society that could care less about women. Nevertheless, I think it’s instructive for us to review how/why the adoption policy came to be changed recently; as it can tell us a lot about what to expect in the future for western societies.

So what was the rationale underlying China’s policy changes: I believe it was threefold: the first one being the usual backhanded swipe at western civilization in general. This is similar to what progressives in the US did when they helped ban white middle-class families from adopting black orphans. It’s part and parcel of the whole bruhaha that we saw flare up over the Madonna adoption controversy, for instance, as in: better a million children dead of starvation in the streets before allowing a westerner to adopt a single one of them.

The second one, I believe, is sheer, vicious, spitefulness aimed at women who have some autonomy. Obviously in a society, such as China, where women are the low ‘man on the totem pole’ it must gall the average man over there to see western women with some control over their own lives. Western women can travel alone, obviously we have a good economic standard of living if we can afford to travel to China to arrange an adoption and raise a child alone, etc.,

Also, the petty spitefulness behind some of the criteria is pretty obviously directed against women since as I said previously, we are the majority of single parent adopters of children in China and everywhere else really. So now, no fat women can be allowed to adopt a Chinese orphan as: “The guidelines include a requirement that applicants have a body-mass index of less than 40.”

A totally unnecessary, ridiculous, petty, spiteful qualification added just to frustrate women, for the most part. Since few single men adopt, although they’ve been legally allowed to do so for decades now. Thus a rule such as this is clearly going to have a disparate impact on women. They’ll probably set up scales at the airports to weight western women and send them packing, if they are over the weight requirements.

Idiots. Why not just ban fat women from traveling to China as tourists while you’re at it? That will be the next step. We waste too much gas transporting you back and forth on planes will be the rationale.

Anyway to the final reason, which I frankly believe is probably the most important one. That in spite of the Chinese wanting to step on the toes and aggravate western civilization whenever possible, without being too obvious about it (ala Paris of the Orient), they nevertheless also recognized the loss of power western men experienced once western women had legal rights on par with him, including and especially the control of our own reproductive processes, ie., as in the right to decide if, when and how we are going to create our own families. So in spite what was probably a ferocious inner struggle, the Chinese ultimately decided to help the “brotherhood” maintain their overall status by striking a blow against western women’ choices in this area. Hopefully, by helping western man restrict women’ choices, they could help them regain some of the control lost to us.

Sad really.

That man everywhere is so self-centered and greedy for power and control over their sisters.

Thus the struggle continues.

Saturday, December 23, 2006

Mother: Most Beautiful Word in the WORLD...

Of course, there will be the usual jealous misfits, who are mad that father wasn't included within the list.

Oh well...

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Mum's the word, says the world: Mother was most loved, while father was absent...

Mother is the most beautiful word in the English language, according to a survey of non-English speakers.

More than 40,000 people in 102 countries were polled by the British Council to mark its 70th anniversary. Mother, passion, smile, love and eternity were the top five choices - but father did not even make it into the list of 70 words.

But some unusual choices did make the list, such as peekaboo, flabbergasted, hen, night and oi.

SOME OF THE TOP WORDS 1. Mother 2. Passion 3. Smile 4. Love 5. Eternity 48. Peekaboo 50. Kangaroo 61. Oi 63. Hiccup 70. Hen night Fantastic, destiny, freedom, liberty and tranquillity rounded out the top 10.

The British Council promotes the learning of English around the world and teaches the language to more than 500,000 people each year. Chris Wade, director of communications at the council, said the most favoured choices in the list were all strong, positive words. He said: "All of us have a mother and have a reasonable idea of who that person is, it's one piece of certainty we can have and it's also a very powerful word in a variety of cultures. "But I wonder if we would have had the same result if we had done the survey in the UK." (emphasis mine: I'll answer that NO...since western civilization has apparently spawned the most jealous, useless, selfish, cheap and stingy jackasses in the world) He said the list showed the diversity of the English language: "There are words denoting concepts that people aspire to, like freedom; words that sounded fun like peekaboo and others that aren't really words at all but they convey real meaning, like oi."

Other words to make the top 70 included serendipity, loquacious, kangaroo and zing. There were also words imported from other languages, such as renaissance and aqua. Presumably, a maternal kangaroo would be highly rated indeed." We'll grab anything we can take. Lots of words have been stolen over the years," Mr Wade said. " But while other languages may be reluctant to use our words, [this has provided] a real richness in the English has evolved."

He said one English word to have gained widespread usage recently was flip-flop, which came 59th in the survey. Failed US presidential candidate John Kerry was accused by the Republicans of having "flip-flopped" - or changed his stance - on a number of policy areas. "Flip-flop was used a lot during coverage of the US election. If the survey had been done a year ago it probably would not be in the list," said Mr Wade.

Michael Quinion, whose recent book Port Out, Starboard Home examines some of the quirks of the English language, said it was a very "eclectic" list. He said: "These non-English speakers certainly have wonderful English vocabularies. "There seems to be a curious mixture of the formal and the colloquial. Oi is not a word that I would've thought turned up in English manuals all that often." The list also included what Mr Quinion said was his own favourite English word - serendipity, which came 24th. "It's so mellifluous but it's such a nice concept too."

Saturday, December 09, 2006

Prodigal Fatherhood = Abandonment of Children

As anyone knows who has been commenting on this blog (including the vast array of nuts I’ve attracted) I am now entering my second year of blogging about child custody issues. October 27, 2004 was my very first post.

Generally what I’ve done in the past is post an article with a link attached along with a brief opinion of my own about the article.

Now, I’d like to try something different and each week post a discussion point about various public policies I’d like to see implemented nationwide. I don’t know if there are enough discussion points on the various public policies out there to cover 52 weeks in a year (since I generally update weekly) but since I have a very active imagination somehow I think there will be.

One policy, which I would like to discuss today, is a time limit for a so-called prodigal father to be allowed to file a paternity lawsuit.

Why is it that a prodigal father can be aware of a pregnancy for months before the birth or even be at the hospital for the birth, then decide NOT to file to have his name placed on his childrens’ birth certificate for months or even years afterwards? In essence isn’t he abandoning his children?

YET years after the fact, with no questions asked or penalty whatsoever, the prodigal is then allowed to file for paternity even though he had the opportunity to do so earlier and chose not to exercise it?

Is there any other legal situation that someone can think of where a person can chose not to exercise their rights and then turn up years later and file for them?

For instance can I get injured on someone’s property and wait ten years to file a lawsuit? Can I just leave my car on the street and turn up years afterwards to reclaim it? Same thing with my house, can I refuse to pay property taxes on it, abandoning it really and then suddenly waltz in and announce I’ve decided to reclaim my rights? Can a mother leave her children for a year or two, or three and then suddenly turn up again and reclaim them as if nothing happened?

No, I don’t think so.

Most states have a six months to a year abandonment policy regarding children and this should be enforced via paternity claims as well. Unless these prodigals can prove they didn’t know about the child or said child was deliberately hidden from them, then their rights to file a paternity claim should be time limited to the six months to a year that most states force mothers to live under.

It’s clearly a special benefit for men which allows this scenario to play out ONLY with paternity claims, whereas after years of ignoring their children these same prodigal fathers are even allowed to simultaneously file a paternity and custody lawsuit at the same time.

I mean New York was stunned to learn that John Aylsworth, who was at the hospital when Bridget Marks’ twins were born,YET chose to wait over THREE YEARS to file a paternity suit, was still allowed to file a custody lawsuit following it as well.

OVER THREE YEARS AFTER THE FACT.

Even though he knew about the kids since their birth and left them with their mother all those years.

What kind of crap is that?

We shouldn’t be allowing special treatment for men to file for paternity whenever it is most advantageous for them to do so, as in: My kids’ mother died so now I can file for paternity and custody of the kid I’ve been ignoring for years. This will enable me to collect her life insurance policy and social security benefits even though I knew about my kid for years and never bothering filing a paternity suit in all that time.

OR alternative scenario: My kids’ mother finally woke up and realizes I’m not really planning on marrying her and she has started seeing someone else. So before she marries someone else and then hits me up for child support, which I’ve gotten away with paying up to now stringing her along with the “we’ll be getting married soon” baloney, let me file for paternity and custody first…

Unless, as I stated previously, these prodigal fathers have creditable proof that they weren’t aware of the existence of the child or the child was actively hidden from them, then their claim should be denied outright. The six months to a year abandonment clause should automatically kick in (no judicial discretion whatsoever here) which covers abandonment of children in most states and these prodigals should be turned away from courts and not allowed to file a ‘daddy-come-lately’ paternity lawsuits.

More Nonsense from the Usual Suspects

More nonsense from another sperm donor.

Of course, I believe he could win this particular case in spite of the fact that he has only ONE FAMILY LAW EXPERT supporting him versus 21 supporting the mother.

AND no, despite the article's attempted spin on this situation, it has nothing to do with the law just catching up to new technology. Use of sperm donors has existed for decades now. It's quite a common and simple procedure.

What has changed is not the technology but the legal climate favoring men. Who even when they, themselves, make the decision to be nothing but sperm donors STILL wish to retain the legal option to change their mind afterwards.

I mean what if the woman had a handicapped child and he would have been on the hook for lifetime child support, would he have shown up to contest his original agreement to be a sperm donor then????

Of course, all fathers rights nuts will be supporting this guy even through they are constantly screaming about men having no legal right before birth. Many men want legal rights to interfere with abortions or for men to have the right to a 'paper abortion', for instance, where they can opt out of paying child support.

YET when they get decision-making power, such as this man had, they also wish the prerogative to change their minds at anytime after the fact and throw some mother and her children lives in turmoil, similar to what that recreational sperm donor did to Bridget Marks and her poor twins in New York.

Frankly, this guy exercised his right to a paper abortion and now wants to rescind it...

Nobody forced him to donate sperm which he knew was going to be used for this woman to artifically inseminate herself with...they never even had sex or any sort of relationship. So he can't even claim the standard "I was 'tricked' into getting her pregnant" like many men in these situations try to claim. He went into this with both eyes wide open...

It's simply outfreakinrageous that he should be allowed to rescind his decision now and throw those kids lives as well as the life of their mother into such turmoil.

Outfreakinrageous.

http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/16151079.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp


Posted on Sun, Dec. 03, 2006

Kansas lawsuit could be landmark

The case involves a sperm donor who wants parental rights to twins born last year.
By DAVID KLEPPER


Family law experts across the country are watching as Kansas’ Supreme Court takes up a case that could decide the parental rights of sperm donors.

The suit, set for arguments before the court Monday, concerns a Shawnee County man who donated sperm to a friend. The woman underwent artificial insemination and delivered twins in May 2005. The man argues that he always intended to act as a father to the children. No agreement was put into writing, however, and a judge later decided the man had no rights as a father.

That’s because Kansas law denies parental rights to sperm donors unless they have a written agreement with the mother specifying that they will act as father. The 1994 law was designed to protect children conceived through artificial insemination from frivolous custody disputes, as well as to safeguard donors from child support lawsuits. (Emphasis mine: Exactly right, the law protects everybody concerned, especially the children protecting them from frivolous custody disputes.)

The unmarried woman, who, like the donor, is identified only by initials in court documents, argues that she never intended to share parenting with the man. She chose the man, whom she had known for 10 years, because of his good medical history.

“He is a donor only,” wrote the woman’s attorney, Susan Barker Andrews. Andrews argued that the man should have put his intentions in writing if he wanted to be a father.

The man appealed his case to the high court, arguing that the law is unconstitutional.

His attorney, Kurt James of Topeka, said his client had discussions with the woman about sharing parental responsibilities.

He said a better law would require donors to sign an agreement waiving their rights as parents.

The Supreme Court is expected to rule in February.

The verdict could affect laws governing sperm donation throughout the country.

(Emphasis mine: Family law experts have lined up on both sides of the case. Ummm ONE person, Linda Henry Elrod, does NOT fit the definition of plural experts. She is ONE expert.

Linda Henry Elrod, a family law professor at Washburn University, filed a legal brief in which she sided with the donor.)
Elrod argues that to require a man to have a written agreement before he has parental rights over his biological children is to violate his constitutional rights. The law, she wrote, “cannot take away a constitutional right to be a parent” without due process.

(Emphasis mine: But 21 other family law experts across the country filed a brief supporting the woman.) They argued that the Kansas law in effect protects the interests of children created through sperm donation, as well as the mothers and the donors, by requiring any agreements to be set down in writing.

One of those professors, Nancy Polikoff, a family law professor at American University, said “biology is not enough” to give the man parental rights. The law assumes the mother (and any husband or partner she might have) will have custody when it comes to children of sperm donors. Without the Kansas law, she said, women could face custody battles from donors, or donors could find themselves being asked to support a child they never intended to know.

Both professors agreed that the case, the first of its kind in Kansas, is blazing new legal territory.

“It’s the Wild West out there,” Elrod said. “The advances in technology are just way ahead of where the law is.”

To reach David Klepper, call (785) 354-1388 or send e-mail to dklepper@kcstar.com.

Sunday, November 26, 2006

A Waste of Valuable Resources...

Ummmm...

If we have an extra $500,000 lying around somewhere this is the LAST place that it should be used.

Clearly these two women weren't thinking about the best use of resources when they recommended this.

Let me spell it out plainly: Local police departments, county sheriffs, et al, are all part and parcel of the enforcement arm of a legal system which has been shown time and again to be biased and unfair to MOTHERS today...as millions of mothers have now been separated from their children due to unfair and biased custody rulings by Judges favoring fathers.

That's what all the studies have been showing, the Census figures, AARP statistics on grandparents' custody and, in fact, it was the entire point of the "Breaking the Silence" documentary that was recently shown on PBS.

Clearly Feinstein and Hutchinson haven't been paying attention.

If we have any extra money lying around, we should be looking at starting up an "Underground Railroad" sort of operation to assist children unfairly separated from their mothers due to men manipulating the court system...NOT giving the enforcement arm of a biased against mothers legal system extra funding.

Actually these very abusive and unfit parents mentioned in the article are the very ones most likely to start a custody battle in their ongoing attempts to continue abusing the mother via the kids...so many of them already have custody of their children. They don't need to abduct them. So you are basically giving these men another tool to continue their victimization of a child's non-custodial mother.

A totally objective look at some of the most high-profile media cases over the last few years have shown that frequently the fathers involved are the court-approved custodial parent. They have already been through a court-ordered evaluation and have legal and physical custody already: as in OJ Simpson, Christopher Rhodes, Darren Mack, three good examples. Say what you will about Susan Smith and Andrea Yates, neither of these mothers had ever been evaluated as parents and been given court-ordered custody.

So why in the name of God would we wish to give the enforcement arms of courts that made these ridiculous custody decisions in unfit fathers' favor (and millions more just like them) more money supposedly to 'help children'...

Isn't that the very definition of insanity. Doing the same thing over and over again yet expecting a different result?


http://www.ktre.com/Global/story.asp?S=5698618&nav=menu118_3

11/17/06 - Washington DC

Anti-Family Kidnapping Bill
News Release


The Senate Thursday night unanimously passed a measure sponsored by U.S. Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) that would help prevent abductions of children by family members and authorizes $500,000 in matching grants for FY 2008 to help fund local law enforcement efforts to investigate and prosecute these cases.

"The kidnapping of a child by a family member is our nation's most common form of abduction. These kidnappings represent a growing epidemic that receives little or no attention from the media or law enforcement. In fact, approximately 70 percent of States lack the funding and the legal guidelines necessary to investigate and prosecute these tragic cases," Senator Feinstein said.

"The bill approved by the Senate provides matching grants to give State and local law enforcement the tools they need. It is an important first step towards helping to alleviate the trauma experienced by the thousands of children who are abducted by a family member each year."

"More than half of abducting parents have a history of violence and abuse, yet these abductions are often overlooked because they are viewed as domestic disputes," Senator Hutchison said.

"This legislation will help establish guidelines and provide new funding to law enforcement agencies to solve these cases. We must give family abduction the concern and attention needed to return missing children home safely."

Bill Summary

Specifically, the "Family Abduction Prevention Act" bill would authorize $500,000 in matching grants for FY2008 (and funds, as necessary, through FY 2009 and FY 2010), to states to assist with costs associated with family abduction prevention...

Our Courts Continue Undermining Natural Law Supporting Motherhood

Continuing to allow never-married men veto power over a single mother's adoption decisons will lead to more abortions. As more of these adoptions are overturned and the word gets out in communities across the US, the choices for mothers will become either a) keeping their babies themselves; or, b) abortion.

Adoptions won't even be on the radar any longer.

Why do people assume that just because a mother decides she can't raise her child herself that she would consider it just dandy to hand her child over to another teenager or some irresponsible recreational sperm donor? Single mothers who give a child up for adoption have historically been documented as being mature, caring individuals, actually more stable then single mothers who keep their children...at least that's what the research used to say 20 odd years ago.

Now that men have decided they wish to be in charge of everything again: including children they historically ignored, suddenly these mothers who chose adoption are being demonized as these horrible people, just trying to keep a kid away from a 'loving' father just for spite or for reasons of child support. Even though caring mothers have been chosing adoption in their children's best interest LONG before child support was even invented.

BTW, you're not a loving father just because you decided to have casual sex with someone and accidentally reproduced a child.

But IF we are going to have this strict DNA definition of fatherhood, then we need to give a maternal grandmother the exact same rights as a biological father. As she contributes the exact same DNA mix as he does...



http://www.gwinnettdailypost.com/index.php?s=&url_channel_id=32&url_article_id=21598&url_subchannel_id=&change_well_id=2

Gwinnett Daily Post

Gwinnet County, Georgia
November 24, 2006

Gwinnett case prompts dads' rights bill 11/16/2006


By Dave Williams Staff Writer
dave.williams@gwinnettdailypost.com

ATLANTA - When Rashad Head found out late last year that his girlfriend was pregnant, the Gwinnett County teenager said he decided he wanted to take responsibility for his unborn child.

"I made him," said Head, now 17, of Lawrenceville. "I don't want him to feel that he doesn't have a place in the world."

But Head's now ex-girlfriend thought differently.

She decided to give up her son, who was born last July, and surrendered her parental rights to a Florida couple who are seeking to adopt the child.

It all happened without Head's permission or even his knowledge, which is allowable under Georgia law.

Now, Head's pastor at Christ the King Baptist Church in Dacula, who also happens to be a state legislator, wants to make sure no other Georgia father ever finds himself in a similar situation.

Rep. Ron Sailor, D-Decatur, Wednesday made "Rashad's Law" one of the first bills to be introduced into the General Assembly on the first day for prefiling legislation for the 2007 session.

"When a father is ready, willing and able to take care of a child, we believe the father's right to do so ought to be protected,"

Sailor said during a news conference at the Capitol. Sailor's bill would prohibit unmarried mothers who want to surrender their parental rights from transferring custody of their child without the biological father's consent.

The father would have 30 days after receiving notice of the mother's intent to object to a third party gaining custody. (emphasis mine: This will also impact ALL custody decisions going forward, btw, not just adoptions. So even if a single mother is in the military and deploys, it will impact her custodial plan for her children as well.)

If the father objects and the mother doesn't wish to maintain custody, the father would assume custody of the child.

Since the legislation would not be retroactive, it wouldn't affect Head's case, which is now pending in Gwinnett County Superior Court.

Leslie Gresham, the lawyer representing Head and his parents, said it's also possible that the case could be transferred to Florida.

She said a court order is now in effect that prohibits her client even from finding out the names of the Florida couple or where they are living with the child. (emphasis mine: As usual we can always count on another woman spearheading the efforts to undercut mothers' rights regarding our own children.)

Head said all he has is a photo of his son that the child's mother sent him.

He said he is working part time, and his parents have offered to help support his son. "I believe I could take care of a child as well as (the Florida couple) could," he said.

Gresham said she is optimistic that Head will prevail in court and win custody of his son. "More and more, I think, courts ... are going with fathers' rights," she said.

Sailor said the General Assembly also has looked favorably on fathers' rights in recent sessions, giving him reason to be encouraged about his bill's prospects. (emphasis mine: Good old Dixie, on the wrong side of EVERY SOCIAL MOVEMENT AND HUMAN RIGHTS ISSUE WE EVER HAD TO FACE AS A NATION...EVERY SINGLE ONE...FROM SLAVERY RIGHT THROUGH TO UNION ORGANIZING, SO COMMON PEOPLE WOULD HAVE A DECENT STANDARD OF LIVING...Well guess what: that's not much of a reference that a Georgia assembly has looked favorably upon fathers rights.)

This year, the Legislature set new guidelines for child-support awards, a follow-up to a law enacted last year that requires judges to consider the incomes of both divorcing parents when awarding child support.

Before the change, only the incomes of noncustodial parents were counted in child support awards.

Monday, November 20, 2006

Finally-- Justice has It's Day in Court

It's about time that this common sense step has been taken.

I'm 1000% behind this woman and am hoping she wins her case.

Men have been cheating on their wives for centuries and getting away with it. They have even profitted from no-fault divorce today, as it makes no distinction on custody and/or marital property issues for 'bad boy' behavior. A husband can be cheating on his wife for years and when she finally gets fed up with it and files for divorce, the cheater can still get custody of any children, alimony and a 50/50 split of marital property with no penalties whatsoever for his bad behavior...

Bad behavior get rewarded everyday of the week in this context.

A good example of this is Hallie Berry, whose husband cheated on her 29 times before she finally filed for divorce. YET he was still eligible for alimony, even though it was a short-term marriage, both had careers, no kids...

All I can say is Thank God Hallie you didn't have any kids with him. OTHERWISE you would have been facing the dreaded "Fed-ex" syndrome...

It's like PAS, the same but different...

Generally exhibited by greedy men trying to get custody so they can juice the mother for money, the state for tax credits and benefits; but most importantly they don't have to pay child support themselves. It's a dirty living but some men have to do it, as they are so worthless they aren't good for much else...

Anyway, I receive emails constantly from mothers who have told me they lost custody of their children to some empowered by the courts monster, who cheated on them constantly...AND when they finally dared to try and do something about it, they lose their children...

So we see where no-fault divorce has morphed into another tool used as a club by men against women.

Even though originally no-fault divorce was supposed to be about 'helping' women get out of abusive marriages easier...

As usual every law made to help women has been seized upon and misused by men to help themselves...

Well what else is new????

Anyway, allowing women to take these cases, of disease spreading through careless sexual behavior by cheaters, to civil court ensures that justice MIGHT finally be served.

Many will say that women can be taken to court as well under these circumstances and yes, that's true. But somehow I have a feeling that the vast majority of these cases will see men as defendants...as history has a way of repeating itself over and over and over again. Thus, I believe men will continue being the primary cheaters as they have been throughout the ages and I don't care how many 'empowered women' newspaper columns or magazine articles claim are out there cheating...

So we'll see, but for the time being I say THIS is a good thing for women. A very good thing.

Actually you should be able to take men to civil court for POTENTIALLY spreading an STD to you...POTENTIALLY...through irresponsible sex with someone they hardly know...

Again, a good thing to do to cheaters.

http://www.sanluisobispo.com/mld/sanluisobispo/16057207.htm

STD suit could set precedent in state
By Leslie Parrilla

lparrilla@thetribunenews.com

A former San Luis Obispo County resident is suing her ex-husband, claiming he negligently infected her with a sexually transmitted disease in what experts say could be a precedent-setting case in California.

Legal experts say the case between Janet Smith and Patrick Neiland Smith is significant because many people do not realize passing on an STD could pose a legal liability.

The San Luis Obispo case could set a precedent because it may be the first in the state to be resolved after a California Supreme Court ruling this year stating that people are liable not only when they know they have an STD, but also when they should have known.

"People are not as careful perhaps as they need to be," said Loyola Law School professor John T. Nockleby. "People probably aren’t thinking about potential legal liability when they’re having casual sex."

The Smiths were married in 1979 and lived in San Luis Obispo County. They are completing divorce proceedings.

Janet Smith, 52, now a resident of Nevada, is asking for an unlimited amount of compensation in the lawsuit, claiming her ex-husband was unfaithful during their marriage, contracted the human papillomavirus, or HPV, and negligently infected her.

She underwent a hysterectomy and was left fearful of having contracted other STDs, the suit states.

Civil suits represent only one side of the story.

San Luis Obispo attorney Mark B. Connely, who is representing Patrick Neiland Smith, now a resident of Santa Barbara County, argued during a jury trial this week that his client did not negligently infect his ex-wife with HPV and that Smith did not know he had the virus.

The jury will decide whether Smith is negligent and whether he should have known he had an STD.

Nockleby said the Supreme Court decision in John B. v. the Superior Court of Los Angeles County "says you can sue somebody else for giving you an STD, not only if they know they have the STD, but if they had symptoms" that would have caused a reasonable person to go and find out whether they were infected.

That is something Nockleby believes the general public does not know.

"Not that I want to make sexual relationships about law, but I do think people who engage in casual sexual encounters ... need to know about this kind of thing," he said.

The Smith case is expected to continue with closing arguments today.

Leslie Parrilla can be reached at 783-7645.

Saturday, November 18, 2006

Single Mothers by Choice

I don't understand why so many people are upset about this class of women deciding to be single mothers. I mean we've had women in the lower classes as well as the rich doing this crap for decades and no one was the least concerned. Now suddenly responsible career women, who've worked productively all their lives and contributed to society, decide they wish to be mothers and it's the end of civilization as we know it.

It's not that big a deal.

This woman has worked, she has a career. That child will do just fine. He'll be no more of a burden then any of the millions of ghetto mothers' or some rich bimbo starlets' irresponsibly produced children will be.

Actually having a baby in this manner takes planning as well as stable finances. Anyone can see this as it's already cost the woman $10,000 in IVF treatment to have her child.

If people want to pick on some irresponsible reproductive behavior why not focus on some of the two categories I mentioned above. Those that produce vast amounts of children through irresponsible reproductive behavior which eventually become a burden on the taxpayers in most systems.

This child and others produced like him will not become that...their mothers will make enough income to support them quite comfortably...

This woman is rather plain, although she appears nice enough from the story. Yet, she might have never met a man who was willing to settle down and have a stable long-term relationship with her, however. As let's face it, in our media-obsessesed world most men want the women they marry to be much nicer looking then this poor girl.

Not to mention that at her age, she'll probably never meet anyone if she hasn't met them already.

YET she'll probably be a fine mother, dote on her only child and ultimately raise a fine, healthy, productive son--all without the use of a male overseer to monitor her behavior.

Imagine that.

Many are condemning her as selfish. Well guess what ALL parents are selfish. You have to be to bring any children into the world we've created for them today. So if you are going to tag women like this as selfish, then prepare for extinction...as that's the next step when all these wonderful unselfish people lead us down that road.

Last point: men better get used to this happening more and more today, as women are getting highly fed up with their behavior...even all this custody crap they started recently to avoid child support, ie., as in Fed-ex's and Brittany's Spears' custody fight.

Men are rapidly sliding into irrelvancy with all the trouble they are causing.

As I've said many times, a test tube is cleaner, quieter, and a heck of a lot less trouble then the average man is today...and these women are proving my point.



http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/femail/article.html?
in_article_id=416733&in_page_id=1879&in_a_source=


Daily Mail
24 hours a day

Motherhood is my right


By RUTH YAHEL Last updated at 08:22am on 16th November 2006

A growing generation of single career women are reaching their late 30s unmarried but still desperate to become mothers. Many are embarking on parenthood alone - and their quest will soon be made easier.

Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt wants the law changed to allow single women and lesbians to have fertility treatment without the need to prove there will be a father figure in the child's life.

Here, Ruth Yahel, a 41-year-old TV production executive, explains why she decided from the outset to be a lone parent, and why - in her opinion - they should not be vilified:

When I was in my 30s, I remember feeling pangs of longing whenever I held friends' babies. My biological clock was ticking but it was never the right time, never the right relationship.

Even when I reached my 39th birthday, I didn't feel I had yet become one of those women destined not to have children. Then, at the start of 2004, my married sister - the mother of a baby boy - asked me whether I still wanted children. When I said 'yes', she asked me how I thought 'that might happen'. My initial reaction was one of annoyance, but her words sparked something inside me. I was fast approaching 40 and a potential loss in my fertility, yet I had a desperate desire to have a child.

In every other area of my life I had made conscious decisions about what I wanted.

But when it came to what, potentially, was the most important thing of all, I was leaving everything to chance. I had always been rather intimidated by career women who would categorically state that motherhood was not for them. I couldn't imagine letting go of the idea unless I had to.

Sometimes I envied them and thought how liberating it must be not to have to worry any more. But, mostly, I feared falling into the group of women who don't get around to having children and end up bitterly regretting it.

Like most women my age, I had tied in all hopes for children with the desire for a lasting relationship. It had never occurred to me to see the two things as something separate. That evening with my sister, it suddenly dawned on me that these two things might never coincide. I had to act - and quickly.

I was lucky enough to have a friend, Nico, prepared to father my child. We met in Italy in 1991 when I was teaching English as a foreign language in a private school. Nico was one of my students. He was married at the time and I was in a relationship, and we became close friends - although sex was never on the agenda.

Long before I'd started worrying about my fertility, he once suggested having a child together and I'd laughed it off. Now I thought about it differently.

I was fortunate in that I already had a genetic father, Nico, who wanted to be an active figure in the child's life, so I decided to go for it.

Before embarking on the process, I went to a clinic in London to make sure I had no fertility problems. With hindsight, I wish I'd done this when I turned 30.

A lot of women spend their 20s and 30s trying to not get pregnant and it's only when they want to that the problems begin to surface. In my case, the damage had already been done.

Endometriosis had affected my ovaries and Fallopian tubes. The only option now was IVF. Two cycles of expensive IVF, costing £5,000 each, followed. I had counselling before and during fertility treatment to help me through the outcome.

I took stock of how I'd come to this point. It was my time to reflect on my fears and concerns, my time to feel sorry for myself (and at times I did) that I wasn't going to have a child within a conventional relationship.

It was like a mourning process. But I would leave each session feeling strong enough to work towards my chosen goal.

On February 7, 2005, I celebrated my 40th birthday at a party thrown for me by friends and family. Many people in the room didn't know I was having IVF treatment, and I didn't touch the champagne they handed me. I knew that in a week's time, I would be taking a pregnancy test and finding out if I was going to have a baby.

The wait was nerve-racking. When I took the test and it was positive, I was stunned. I couldn't believe that such a clinical process had resulted in a pregnancy.

Nico, my friends and family were all delighted. If they were sad that I wasn't going to have a child as part of a couple, they didn't show it. They knew that I already bitterly regretted that myself.

Luca Gabriel, was born naturally in October that year after a healthy pregnancy. My mother and sister were there and Nico held his son minutes after he was born. We chose his name together. I felt totally vindicated. I had my baby and nothing else mattered.

Now I feel utter relief and joy that I found the courage to act. But at the same time, I feel anger and frustration for other women in the same position as I was.

I believe that modern motherhood is in crisis. Women have been told they can and should compete equally in the workplace. We invest a huge amount of our time, money and energy in the pursuit of this so we feel we're achieving something.

But somewhere along the line we've all too often had to leave behind motherhood. As much as I hate to admit it, these two roles do not fit naturally together.

In your working life you have some control - you have a structure and, hopefully, you feel a sense of accomplishment and are rewarded both financially and emotionally.

As a mother, your day has little structure; you're busy all the time, yet when asked: 'What did you do today?' you can hardly recall what filled that time and why you didn't get out of the house.

When we think about returning to work, we worry we won't be flexible enough to respond to the work environment and that we'll have to compromise on material and personal pursuits. We worry about lack of money and free time.

Most of all, we feel like bad mothers for handing our babies over to childminders.

And employers don't always do all they can to dispel those fears.

Of course, being a mother, especially a single mother, is hard work. But once you've made the decision to go for it, you will find the time and energy you need and make it your priority. You learn to live a different life with your child. I've had considerable support from my workplace and have been able to work flexibly around my commitments to my son.

Things that seemed so important to me before - material things, my appearance, going out to smart restaurants - seem less so now.

The main accusation levelled at woman who, like myself, have chosen to be single mothers, is that we are selfish. People say it wasn't meant to be or accuse you of being rash and irresponsible.

But there is nothing irresponsible about the thought processes and procedures a single woman has to go through to have her own child or adopt.

As the son of a women who became a single mother by choice, at least Luca won't have to go through the pain of his parents splitting up. He knows his parents' relationship has clearly defined boundaries.

He will have access to his birth father and extended family, and will know as much of his own cultural heritage as he chooses, because I was lucky enough to have a suitable known donor. Even though Nico is now teaching in Rome, he sees Luca every few months.

I was no more selfish than any other woman conceiving. We all want to feel our baby in our arms, hold them close, smell their sweet skin, relish their triumphs and watch as others coo over our child.

In the end, we are all selfishly driven as parents. We are driven by our own need to procreate, and we feel it's something that as human beings we should do - even if we have to act outside the bounds of convention: the desire to have a child doesn't go away because a woman is single.

Motherhood is something that every woman has a right to try for. When there is no father figure, a woman will do much soul-searching on how to provide male role models for her children.

I was worried, of course, that Luca wouldn't see his father every day. I didn't know for sure what effect this would have on him, but I vowed that I would do everything in my power to compensate for that and try to limit the damage.

I agree that a good marriage or relationship may well be the best family background you can offer a child, and it's something I still want for myself. But it's most definitely not the only responsible way to do it.

And I would say that single parents planning for children are most acutely aware of the difficulties involved. They understand their own obligations and probably deal with their children's needs as sensitively as possible because they've had to struggle so hard to have them.

Hopefully, our children will be less likely to complain that they were overlooked or taken for granted.

I still hope to find a great relationship in the future. Maybe Nico will have children of his own; maybe Luca will have a sibling via conception or adoption.

Undoubtedly, Luca will have friends who come from single-parent homes via more conventional circumstances, if divorce rates are anything to go by.

Last year, I took part in the Channel 4 series The Baby Race. It brought together a group of single, incredibly brave women, all united by our quest to be mothers.

We formed a support network for each other that is still going with many more members. Of all ages and backgrounds with different routes to motherhood in mind, we always had a common goal.

I remember meeting them all for the first time at a photoshoot and being completely overwhelmed by the feeling of solidarity and unconditional support from a group of strangers.

Some of us have managed to have and adopt children, some are no longer single. The majority, however, are still trying for and awaiting their babies. Their children will have an upbringing full of love, hope and possibility.

Single women can change things and set a good example to those around by exercising their right to have children and bringing them up compassionately and with dignity in the face of any scepticism. The face of modern motherhood is changing and we must accept that.

Luca has just turned one-year-old. I planned a family party at home with cake and presents. Nico came over for the weekend.

The last year has been a whirlwind. I don't realise how much he has changed my life until occasionally I'm without him, and I walk into his bedroom and look at the empty cot. When he's not around, something is always missing.

I wouldn't go back to my old single life for anything. My overriding message to women in my position would be to make a positive choice about whether to try for motherhood. Don't leave things to chance and don't feel powerless simply because you haven't met the right man.

It is your decision, and yours alone.

Monday, November 13, 2006

Another "Unfit" Judge OR Why I Like the "Cookie Cutter" Approach that Leaves Judges No Discretion

This is really a joke comparing this Judge to King Solomon.

A joke, albeit a sick one..

Yet it speaks to what I have already said dozens of time: mothers and children cannot trust the family court system in this country to rule on our custody cases…

They simply have proven themselves unfit for the role.

Even this farce of a hearing to supposedly decide how to send this little girl down to Uruguay to visit her mother after her mother is deported. I predict this little girl won’t see her mother or Uruguay for the next 18 years and living with a drug dealer, who knows what will have happened to her between now and that time.

http://www1.tcpalm.com/tcp/local_news/article/0,2545,TCP_16736_5082466,00.html

Judge must play King Solomon with Vero Beach child

By DAN GARCIA
October 21, 2006


VERO BEACH — A judge ruled a 22-month-old girl at the center of a bitter custody dispute should live with her father, who is a drug offender, rather than with her mother, an illegal alien.

Circuit Judge Paul B. Kanarek ruled that Dane Cassidy, 26, of Vero Beach should provide the primary residence for the child, despite pleas from the mother's attorney the girl will grow up in a "toxic atmosphere" because of the father's alleged drug use.

After a day-long hearing Friday, Kanarek ruled against the mother, Noelia Noemi Sosa Espindola, 23, who sought to be named as the child's primary provider despite the fact she faces imminent deportation to her native Uruguay.

However, Kanarek asked attorneys for both parties to submit proposals outlining methods in which the child would be flown regularly to Uruguay for visitation with Sosa. (emphasis mine: this is a joke really, a total waste of the mother and attorney's time.)

Sosa's attorney, Margaret Anderson, described the case as "a tragedy," saying Cassidy repeatedly threatened Sosa and her family with deportation if she did not remain with him, hurled ethnic slurs at the family and turned over documents to the Indian River County Sheriff's Office that led to Sosa's arrest for using someone else's Social Security number to find work.

After her arrest, Sosa was placed on a federal detainer for deportation to Uruguay because she overstayed her visa when she traveled to the United States in 2003.

Cassidy's attorney, Kate Hill, told the court "there is no evidence he turned her in" to authorities by telling them Sosa was in the country illegally.

"He was contacted by a detective and that's the first he ever heard of it," Hill said.

Cassidy and Sosa had Danelia Nicole Cassidy out of wedlock Nov. 21, 2004, but they broke up in August 2005 in a bitter spat, during which Sosa flushed her engagement ring down the toilet, according to both of them.

Cassidy, who works for a screening construction company, testified he broke up with Sosa because she was "going to clubs" instead of staying home with their child.

Sosa testified she initiated the breakup because of Cassidy's drug use and because he struck her three times, insulted her family's ethnicity, and broke his curfew by staying out past 10 p.m.

According to court records, Cassidy recently completed drug-offender probation after being charged in St. Lucie County with possession with intent to sell or deliver marijuana on April 20, 2004. (emphasis mine: Just your friendly neighborhood drug dealer, no big deal obviously in a custody case.)

Sosa, who was brought to court under the custody of two federal agents, testified tearfully Cassidy "wasn't mature enough to be a father.

"We got into fights, and the subject was always drugs," Sosa said. "Everytime we got in a fight, he told me he was going to deport me."

Cassidy testified he gave a sheriff's investigator a Social Security card used by authorities to charge Sosa with criminal use of personal identification. Cassidy said he found the card in a closet in November, but didn't gave it to a detective until April — on the eve of his child-support hearing. (emphasis mine: but of course we all know it's not about the money, it never is. It's about the love of a father for his daughter. What a joke.)

Sosa reported to the Vero Beach Police Department her Social Security card and passport were stolen from the vehicle of a friend, Cathleen Vicuna, on Oct. 6, 2005, when she and Vicuna went jogging near Riverside Park.

In considering proposals in which Danelia would be allowed to travel to Uruguay, Kanarek cited Uruguay as a signatory to the international Hague Convention, in which countries are bound to honor family court orders.

Kanarek asked Anderson and Hill to submit proposals within 10 days "that place the child with the father and spell out specifically how the child will have contact with the mother." (emphasis mine: This is a joke really, a complete waste of time, totally unenforceable from the minute the custody order is signed and the mother is on the plane headed back to Uruguay.)

Sunday, November 12, 2006

Another Defeat for Common Sense

Well I was sorry to see this measure defeated.

As I have stated many times litigating custody through the court system helps men. It plays to their strength in these situations: which is manipulation of the legal system through men’s control of greater financial resources. It should be pretty obvious by now to everyone that this presumptive Joint Custody measure, although not ideal by any means, was the lesser of many, many, many, evils that mothers and children could face if forced into court. Many evils.

I guess it also points out that this ‘custody war’ situation which has been going on for the last decade or so probably has to be addressed by attacking the root of the problem, which is money. It’s not custody or parenting or 50/50 visitation, etc., it is money. The system that currently has made custody of children worth money to people must be dismantled. Then people will have nothing to fight over and I guarantee you that this whole custody litigation business will become moot as few parents will bother contesting it anymore.

I was just listening to a woman talking on an early morning news show today and she was estimating that for the parent of ONE CHILD with the Earned Income Credit (EIC), child care credit and numerous other tax deductions, that custody of ONE child directs about $10,000 annually (not even counting child support) to a custodial parent. That $10,000 is just the EIC and tax credits/deduction a custodial parent is eligible for. It doesn’t even address the non-money benefits, btw, such as food stamps, Medicaid, Section 8 housing subsidiary, even some citizenship benefits…

This is the root of the problem.

Solve this and the whole custody issue will end as quickly as it began. Parents will be back to settling this between themselves and the more interested parent (which is generally the mothers in spite of the endless propaganda to the contrary) will voluntarily assume custody with no argument from the other…there will be no more incentive to fight over visitation/parenting time as there will be no money issues related to who spends more time with the kids...

http://www.bismarcktribune.com/articles/2006/11/08/news/state/123564.txt

Child custody measure, loses, eminent domain comes up big

By DAVE KOLPACK Associated Press Writer

Voters have rejected a proposal to revamp North Dakota's child custody laws, but approved constitutional measures to limit the government's right to acquire private property and adjust the way the state manages trust funds.

With 97 percent of the state's precinct's reporting, the child custody measure trailed 57 percent to 43 percent.

The proposal to restrict eminent domain was leading 68 percent to 32 percent, and a measure changing trust fund management was leading 67 percent to 33 percent.

The child custody measure drew the most emotional debate of the three, and several voters on Tuesday said it was the one issue that brought them to the polls.

Ashley Helbling, 25, of Bismarck, called the measure "just asinine."

Carrie McKay, 35, of Bismarck, said she voted against it because it "doesn't seem right" for the children."

There are a lot of fathers who need help, too," McKay said. "But they needed to word that differently."

Mitchell Sanderson, of Grand Forks, a sponsor of the child custody measure, said the initiative was hurt by "fear-mongering from attorneys who were protecting their Lexus payment and lake home payment."

He said he would attempt to work with the Legislature on a new bill.

"If that doesn't work, I will come back with another initiative that is plain and clear: joint physical custody unless you're found unfit," he said.


**********************************************************
I thought it would be interesting to post some comments from the Bismarck Herald on the feelings of a non-custodial mother when the Presumptive Joint Custody measure failed there last week. She mentions how her children are punished if their father finds out they even say hello to her…

“T wrote on November 10, 2006 8:45 PM:"In response to the one that said it would be good to the father that is the non-custodial parent. Live with reality, non-custodial parents are mothers as well as fathers, and the measure should be looked at again, revised and passed. Free up the civil courts, let the children be children of BOTH parents, and yes, have the parents co-parent and quit putting the kids in the middle... after all at one time, the both were good enough to procreate with, were they not? Besides, the judges do not always know what is in the best interests of the children, they are limited in their time, and are so busy, that it's a wonder they even keep the cases straight anymore."

“T wrote on November 10, 2006 8:54 PM:"In addition to my last post before anyone berates my comments, yes, I am the mother of my children, and they mean the world to me. My ex-husband and his wife make four times than what I do, yet I pay child support and alot of their expenses i.e. clothing, personal hygiene supplies, any of their extra curricular activities... The divorce papers say we have joint legal and joint custody with open visitation for me, yet when my children contact me, or try to see me, they get punished. They are not even allowed by my ex-spouse to say hi to me if we happen to run into each other.... hmmm..."

“T wrote on November 12, 2006 4:16 AM:"to advocate4mykids... have taken my ex to court twice for contempt, the judge just tells him not to do it anymore, as for the child support, it doesn't matter what he makes, they don't take that into consideration, with the expenses being paid, he tells the kids I'm not paying for it, if your mom doesn't pay, then you go without... yes, it is parent alienation by far, and maybe divorced lawyer will go pro bono for me haha... attorneys cost money, and my ex has pretty much made a point of draining it from me so I can't afford an attorney to take him back to court"
**********************************************************
The above was for the benefit of those self-described advocates for women from NOW and such who continue fighting these presumptive Joint Custody measures. These pompous assholes can’t seem to get it through their heads that non-custodial parents being alienated from their children are not just fathers, but many mothers as well.

I don’t know how many times I have to say this but litigating custody through the courts FAVORS fathers. It favors them. Studies have demonstrated this time and again in different states including NOW’s own studies, which have shown that 70% of fathers win custody when they litigate, NOW's own studies. Yet these same nitwits continue saying women shouldn’t settle for the ‘cookie cutter’ approach of presumptive Joint Custody and every case should be individually litigated.

It’s like dealing with a brick wall, I swear to God.

They can’t seem to get it through their thick heads that when fathers litigate, they win. NOW’s own studies have shown this. It is obviously considered trendy and progressive today to give fathers custody and millions of mothers have lost custody of their children today due to this trendiness. BTW many of these mothers never see their children again, due to these unprincipled monsters, who take custody of children to avoid paying child support.

I don’t know…it appears hopeless when you are dealing with a bunch of gender neutralized feminists who continue to disregard the studies they, themselves, funded on this very issue and insist on mothers being required to litigate custody…

All I can say is wake up.

Tuesday, November 07, 2006

The Drumroll of Gender Neutralized Nonsense Continues...

Well who didn’t see this one coming.

I’ve heard many men complaining that their children ignore them when they become adults. Men, of course, have begun blaming motherhood for this. I guess men presumed that when they bogarted their way into the nursery, that it set up some kind of reverse debit system. Whereas kids were then supposed to be more involved with their fathers as they grew older, since men paid so much more attention to children today then their fathers ever paid to them. This should have been obvious, right?

Sadly this isn’t the way it works.

Mothers don’t invest the time they do in their children because they are looking for some ultimate payback when the kids reach maturity. Instead, it is the inutero bonding that sets the stage for the mothers’ love which follows. Which is why the mother/child bond is unique. Most women already intuitively know that bond is the only ‘payday’ a mother ever receives. Since you can be a good, bad or indifferent mother going forward and it guarantees you nothing in the way of future contact, visits or even telephone calls from your kids. Actually some of the best mothers I know rarely see their kids. As once their children have left the nest (or launched as gender neutral proponents now like to say) many move half way across the country or even to Europe and have such full lives there is quite simply little time to visit with their mothers. Maybe once or twice a year if that. Yet their mothers are content, as they know their children are doing well...

This mother/child bond exists, even for the mothers who give their children up for adoption. Which is why when a mother is giving a child up for adoption, hospital personnel generally won’t even let her see the baby or hold it after it is born…as the result could be the mother changing her mind once she is confronted with the reality of the child. But even if she never sees her child, she can be content as a mother if she knows her child has been given a good home and upbringing, one that she couldn't provide...that's a mother's love.

Not so with a sperm donor as it's a totally income driven process, the donor could care less who receives the sperm or what is done with it. Actually they could be using the deposited sperm for a scientific experiment for all a donor knows.

Anyway men attempting to compare the mother/child bond with the experience of a sperm donor are doomed to failure, as this latest nonsense attests. To be honest, I don’t believe there was ever any large amount of children conceived via sperm donation trying to contact their ‘fathers’. This was men trying to equate themselves with mothers, who gave up children for adoption. Clearly a bond exists between those mothers and children as anyone with common sense could attest to. It is NOT the same with sperm donors. This was a bunch of foolishness to begin with, instigated by men, always trying to act like the world revolves around them. The process of donating sperm does not equate with nurturing a child inutero, bonding with it and giving birth to said child from your own body as mothers do.

Please.

No bond is formed because a man discharges a bodily fluid into a dixie cup while looking at pictures of naked women.

Sorry but there is no comparison here between a sperm donor and a mother.

This was men trying to be at the center of the universe in all things once again.

Sigh...the endless struggle continues.

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,20706484-2862,00.html#

Herald Sun

Kids ignore chance to meet donor dads

Kate Jones, medical reporter

November 06, 2006 12:00am


DESPITE new laws and a statewide advertising campaign, no Victorian children conceived by donor sperm have tried to find their biological parents. (emphasis mine: they mean biological fathers, as a mother cannot be a sperm donor. This is more of men trying to equate themselves with mothers. I'm sure many adoptive children wish to meet their biological mother.)

More than 100 young Victorians, who have turned or will turn 18 between July and December this year, are eligible under the new consent laws to apply for identifying information about their biological parents.

The laws came into effect on July 1.

But so far, the Infertility Treatment Authority has yet to receive one application from a donor-conceived child.

ITA chief executive Louise Johnson said many children may not be aware they were conceived with the aid of a donor, "or the time may not be right for them," she said.

It is thought 30 to 50 per cent of donor-conceived children are not told about their true origins.

Next year, more than 200 donor-conceived children will be eligible to contact their biological parents. Donors also have the right to apply for information about children.

Providing there is consent, a donor and child may contact each other.

The ITA has received 10 applications from donors wanting to know details about offspring and 16 donors have voluntarily supplied their information. (emphasis mine: I'm sure that should be interesting. AND if the 'father' conceived 16 or 60 kids with his deposits, I'm sure he'll now lead a rich full life with all his 'children' congregating around his home come the holiday. What a lot of nonsense.)

Saturday, November 04, 2006

Misplaced Priorities focusing on Womens' Eggs versus Her Children

October 25, 2006, 9:16 a.m.

Chicks Protect Their Eggs
Cloning is a women’s issue.

By Kathryn Jean Lopez


“Wow. I never really thought about that.”

That’s the response Jennifer Lahl says she gets “over and over again” when she talks to people about “the women’s health and safety” concerns at the heart of the debate over embryonic-stem-cell research and cloning.

Lahl is a spokeswoman for a nonpartisan group with an international reach called “Hands Off Our Ovaries,” which seeks “a moratorium on egg extraction for research purposes until such time as global discourse and scientific research yields information sufficient to establish adequate informed consent.”

The organization was launched earlier this year on International Women’s Day in March as “a 2006 version of bra burning,” Lahl jokes. The movement is deadly serious, though: She hopes that the Hands Off Our Ovaries message — uniting pro-life and pro-choice women, conservatives and liberal feminists — can serve as a wake-up call to folks who have just never thought through the hows of such complicated and controversial research. Obviously, Lahl says, people know you don’t get the necessary eggs for cloning embryos from a basket. But unless they’ve had extensive experience with infertility issues (and egg “donation”), most busy Americans will have this issue completely off their radars.

Already routine at fertility clinics, egg donation is an unpleasant process that includes prodding and surgery; “donors” (sometimes highly paid) are given hormones to ensure they produce more than the routine monthly amount of eggs — more means a better shot at success. This largely unregulated industry (an estimated $38 million one) has paid little attention to the potential long-term harm from such hyperstimulation. As two bioethicists from Stanford declared last year in an article in Science magazine, at a minimum women should be made aware both that the risks include infertility and even death and that their “donations,” in the case of embryonic-stem-cell research and cloning, may never actually contribute to a cure for anything.

The Hands Off Our Ovaries cautionary message and call for a moratorium on hyperstimulated cloning research may have the opportunity to be heard like never before in the run-up to Election Day. In response to a dramatic plea by Parkinson’s sufferer Michael J. Fox for Missourians to vote against Republican Jim Talent because of his opposition to cloning (my c-word, not Fox’s; the gist of Fox’s disingenuous commercial for Democrat Claire McCaskill is, essentially, that Talent is a mean man who doesn’t like sick people, or at least doesn’t want them to get well), a counter ad is scheduled to air Wednesday night in Saint Louis during game four of the World Series. This ad may be the first time many Missourians hear of the egg factor in the embryonic-stem-cell-research debate.

A ballot initiative is the reason for the ad wars. Amendment 2 would write a constitutional right to human cloning into the state constitution, putting the complicated issue above the reach of the elected legislature.

The anti-Amendment 2 ad is a good, celeb-filled response to Michael J. Fox’s platitudinous and dishonest pull at the heartstrings. It features Jim Caveziel (from The Passion of the Christ), Cardinals pitcher Jeff Suppan, and others. And proclaiming the Hands Off Our Ovaries kind of message is Patricia Heaton, best known for playing Ray Romano’s wife on Everybody Loves Raymond. During the minute-long commercial, Heaton (who, as a spokeswoman for Feminists for Life, is no stranger to such activism) says: Amendment 2 actually makes it a constitutional right for fertility clinics to pay women for eggs. Low-income women will be seduced by big checks and extracting donor eggs is an extremely complicated, dangerous, and painful procedure.

Jennifer Lahl is hopeful, for both the short and the long term. Speaking to National Review Online from Oakland, Calif. on Tuesday night, she noted that she’s a veteran of cloning-initiative fights, having seen one pass in 2004 in California — but asserted that this time, she seems something different happening: “I really think that the egg issue is going to make a difference.” Back during the Golden State Proposition 71 campaign, cloning proponents “could get away with a Michael J. Fox ad.” This time, though, there is another side ready — one offering a coordinated message, and a reasonable, alternative sober message to counter the usual unsubstantiated hype.

— Kathryn Jean Lopez is the editor of National Review Online.

http://article.nationalreview.com/print/?q=MjU4YzkzZWJlZjUzZjA1ZGYzNjViYTNmN2YwNThhNTk=


What they fail to mention is that everything to do with woman's reproductive process generally involves some form of 'extremely complicated, dangerous and painful procedure'...that's just a fact of life.

My problem with this situation is that I'd hate to see women being denied the right to use donor sperm in the future if they wish to create families and haven't found a marriage partner at some point before they are 30. Since the flip side of making egg donations illegal is that it will also probably eventually lead to making sperm donations illegal as well. Especially since some estimates suggest that somewhere between thirty thousand and seventy thousand children are born each year as the result of sperm donations, and only about three thousand each year are conceived using donor eggs; thus it appears women could once again be getting the short end of the stick here.

So basically signing off on this moratorium could be giving away the farm for something that impacts very few women (if those estimates are to be believed.)

I personally feel they should both be legal as long as you are dealing with adults who know the risks involved. Although I wouldn't mind seeing the use of foreign women as donors be made illegal as this is exploitative of vulnerable women. Many of whom are forced into this procedure by the greedy men in their lives (who btw, also force women into donating kidneys and other valuable organs for offshore markets).

Interestingly enough no one (other then one professor on the columbia.edu website) ever thought to mention this aspect of donations of body parts...yet we are to believe that now everyone is concerned because women could be exploited through donating eggs. Nor has any of this crowd ever once mentioned the millions of mothers losing custody of their kids, since chicks also protect their hatched eggs as in mother hens. Yet I never heard of anyone suggesting a moratorium on that happening until we know the long-term results of that situation either.

Odd...really...for people who are suddenly so concerned about women.

Overall I think women have to carefully assess what limits they wish placed on their reproductive rights in this area and disregard the catchy slogans like "Hands Off Our Ovaries"...Not that I think every woman or even most women are going to use donor sperm to create a family with; yet it could eventually constitute a sizable minority of women who do this especially if men continue behaving like such stupid idiots in our society. So I don't want to close that possibility off to women who wish to be mothers.

Closing off those options to women, would result in placing our fates (and the fates of our children) back in the hands of men and the family courts system, which has not shown itself fit either in the past or present to rule on these issues...since children are a women's issue much more so then eggs.

Sadly these people seem to have their priorities mixed up if they think more women are concerned about the fate of an egg donation versus losing their children once they are born...

Stealing the Fruits of a Young Mother's Womb

S. Koreans Search Far and Wide for a Wife

Facing a shortage of prospective rural brides, many men are forced to look abroad.

By Barbara Demick, Times Staff Writer
September 21, 2006


NAMWON, South Korea It was the constellation of acne across her cheeks that made No. 242 stand out from the other young women who were paraded before him in a hotel in Ho Chi Minh City. (emphasis mine: kind of like a hungry wolf who sees a deer limping along and decides it could be easy prey.)

Jeong Ha-gi, 46, flew to Vietnam on a tour organized for South Korean bachelors. He was looking for a wife who would be tough enough to withstand the rigors of life on a rice farm. (emphasis mine: translation--looking for a workhorse to do all his chores for him, so he can lay around on his aging, lazy butt all day probably eating.) Trying to distinguish among all the women with the numbers pinned to their shirts, he decided the one with a bad complexion might be made of sturdy stuff. They were married three days later.

Today, they live together in sullen silence, a chasm of cultural differences between them. She speaks no Korean, he no Vietnamese. They communicate — barely — with a well-thumbed phrase book. Nguyen Thu Dong, who turned out to be only 20, doesn't like getting up at 5 a.m. to do the farm chores. She turns up her nose at kimchi.

"We have a lot of issues between us," said the burly Jeong, who in his undershirt resembles a Korean version of the young Marlon Brando . (emphasis mine: he'll probably turn out to be as fat as Brando became as well.) "Our age difference, our culture, our food. But I wanted a wife and she is who I got."

Despite the obvious pitfalls, South Korean men increasingly are going abroad to find wives. They have little choice in the matter unless they want to remain bachelors for life.

The marriage market in Asia is becoming rapidly globalized, and just in time for tens of thousands of single-but-looking South Korean men, most of them in the countryside where marriageable women are in scant supply. With little hope of finding wives of their own nationality and producing children to take over the farm, the men are pooling their family's resources to raise up to $20,000 to find a spouse abroad.

The phenomenon has become so widespread that last year 13% of South Korean marriages were to foreigners. More than a third of the rural men who married last year have foreign wives, most of them Vietnamese, Chinese and Philippine. That's a huge change in a country once among the most homogenous in the world.

To some extent, the globalized marriage market is having a trickle-down effect, exacerbating the shortage of marriage-age women elsewhere, particularly China.

"There is a long-standing son preference throughout Asia, but now it is happening in the context of this 21st century marriage market," said Valerie M. Hudson, a political scientist and author of "Bare Branches: The Security Implications of Asia's Surplus Male Population."

The preference for sons has translated in South Korea into 113 male births for every 100 females. Ultrasound became widely available here in the 1980s, and the first generation screened for gender before birth is now coming of marriageable age.

But perhaps an even larger factor in the disappearance of young women from the countryside is their tendency to move to the cities in search of careers or urban husbands or both.

"South Korean women don't want to live in the countryside. They don't want to do hard labor, getting their skin brown in the sun. The cities are less traditional, less patriarchal," said Yang Soon-mi, a social worker with the Ministry of Agriculture.

The wife shortage is most severe here in the southwestern region of Jeolla, the traditional heartland of Korea. This is one of the few swaths of South Korea where the rice paddies have not yet been cemented over for gray slabs of high-rise apartments. On a hot August day, the air is thick with the chirping of the cicadas, and red peppers are drying in the sun on the pavement.

On roads cutting through the fields, marriage brokers advertise their services on billboards.

"Vietnamese marriage," reads a billboard in shocking pink on an otherwise quiet country lane.

The wife shortage is having a devastating effect on the agricultural communities, already threatened by urbanization and free trade. Without wives, young men won't want to stay on the farm. Without wives, there are no babies to replenish the stock of farmers.

South Korea and Taiwan are tied for the lowest birthrates in the world, 1.1 per woman, according to a study released last month by the Washington-based Population Reference Bureau. Unlike China, South Korea does not limit births, and is in fact offering tax incentives to encourage more children.

Many of the villages around Jeolla are virtual ghost towns, with a sparse population of elderly residents and hardly a child in sight.

"There are only old people around here," said Le Pho, a 22-year-old Vietnamese woman who married a South Korean a year ago and is now pregnant. Her child will be the first born in the village, Seogok-ri, in more than 20 years. Despite a regulation, widely ignored, prohibiting doctors from divulging the sex of the fetus, Le knows already that she is having a boy.

"My husband and mother-in-law are very happy. They've treated me very well since they found out the baby is a boy," Le said. " (emphasis mine: Thank God, it was a boy...otherwise another poor little girl would probably wind up floating face down in a rice paddy over there.) The neighbors too. When they see my belly, they are amazed."

In fact, the foreign wives are key to rescuing some of these farm villages from extinction. (emphasis mine: why not let them go extinct???? It's continuing the line of hate mongers of women...what's the point?????)

In a nearby village, Oaktae-ri, there are five young children, four of them born to foreign women. Park Jeong-su, 46, whose Chinese-born wife recently gave birth to a daughter, said that all the Korean women in his village moved to Seoul and other cities because they didn't like the farming life.

"When I was a young man, I could find women to date, women who would sleep with me. But nobody who would go to the countryside," said Park, a powerfully built and handsome man with a roguish sense of humor. "Whenever I met a woman I liked, the first question she would ask was, 'Where is your apartment?' "

After more than a decade of looking for a Korean wife, Park went to the Philippines. He didn't meet anyone he liked. He then tried the Unification Church, which has often matched up international couples for group weddings. That didn't work either. He then accepted a friend's invitation to go to Harbin in northeastern China, where he was introduced by a friend's cousin to Yi Ok-ran.

Yi is ethnic Korean and already spoke the language.

"All the women in my village wanted to go to South Korea. We heard that life is good, that people are wealthy," said Yi, cuddling her infant daughter. As a result, she said, in her village in Tonghe County there are also only old people and few children. "There are so many old bachelors."

Many of the brides in South Korea come from the Mekong Delta region south of Ho Chi Minh City. The region is poor, and provincial authorities have been fairly liberal about licensing marriages between Vietnamese women and foreigners.

Newlywed Nguyen Thu Dong said she agreed to marry Jeong Ha-gi only to escape a life of certain poverty.

"A lot of the girls I know are getting married to foreigners. Men from Hong Kong, men from South Korea. Even if they have a Vietnamese boyfriend they like, they want to marry a foreigner to get away," said Nguyen, who is from Can Tho, a town about 80 miles southwest of Ho Chi Minh City.

Nguyen said that her parents told her on her 19th birthday they had been approached by the village matchmaker about setting her up with a foreigner.

"At first I said no," she said. "I was working at the time as a housemaid. But then I came back to my parents' home. I saw how badly they were doing financially, so I agreed."

She said she had no idea how much her family received. Another Vietnamese bride married to a South Korean said that the standard amount was $300.

The men, on the other hand, pay about $15,000 for a complete package that is supposed to include everything from the interpreter to the wedding gown.

Jeong, who had been married once before briefly, said he was talked into going to Vietnam in March by a younger brother. He joined a group of 12 men, from their mid-30s to their 50s.

The women were all younger than 25. They were paraded in small groups in front of the men, who were told to jot down the numbers of those they liked.

"It was like a Miss Korea pageant," Jeong recalled with faint distaste.

Nguyen said she was appalled to be wearing a number and almost ran away before it was her turn to appear in front of the men.

Both have the same complaint — that the interpretation was inadequate.

Jeong said that when they met, he told his prospective wife immediately that he was a farmer and that she replied that she grew up on a farm and liked rural living.

Nguyen said she was told that her suitor was an office worker in the city.

"He is very kind to me and I am grateful for that. But if I knew we were to live in the countryside, I wouldn't have come," Nguyen confided later.
(emphasis mine: Exactly. How many American men go abroad lying to these women telling them they are rich, when many of them are the dregs of society that no decent American woman would want.)

Unable to communicate on their own, the couple quickly seized upon the opportunity to exchange a few thoughts through an interpreter who was accompanying a reporter.

"When will you let me visit my family in Vietnam?" she asked plaintively.

The reply came back: "When you give me a baby." Emphasis mine: vulture circling. My advice: watch your back Nguyen.)


http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-bride21sep21,0,6352703.story?page=2&coll=la-home-headlines

I got a shiver down my spine reading this last line. It reminded me of a nature special I saw which had a flock of vultures circling a lioness struggling to give birth, alone and helpless in the bush.

AND God only knows how many of Nguyen’s girl babies will be murdered before she produces a boy child for this brute. It was very interesting to me that the author mentioned Marlon Brando actually, as Brando was another one always running around in foreign countries bringing women back here to take advantage of them. Everytime you turned around he was getting some foreign woman pregnant and then having a long-drawn out custody fight with them...he got custody of his kids eventually and most of them turned out very badly. The one boy going to jail for a murder and the daughter killing herself in Tahiti after losing custody of her own baby.

Anyway, we can’t do anything to help Nguyen, but if this story shows us nothing else it’s that the entire trade in foreign brides must be brought to an end in the US.

Case in point: the whole Genia Shockome situation is a good example. Bottom line Yevgenia Shockome should never have been here in the first place. She would have been safe right now in Russia with whatever children she gave birth to over there, in her homeland, living with their mother as children were meant to be.

Same thing with this Sadie Loeliger situation, another one of these immigrant marriage/abuse/custody cases…

And there are thousands more just like them too numerous to mention here.

Anyway, let’s just say no to this nonsense.

Men shouldn’t be allowed to troll foreign countries looking for gullible and desperate young women to bring here, so they can steal the fruit of their wombs.

Period.

Sunday, October 29, 2006

Three Strikes Law for Judges

This ruling is a perfect example of why we need to pass a law mandating a three strikes rule for Judges. Whereas when they legislate from the bench ignoring the rule of law, their decision is reviewed and they are fined if found to be ignoring the law. Three times a fine and then their license to practice law is revoked.

The history of this case is that the so-called ‘biological’ father and his girlfriend left these infants in the hospital for 8 days with no contact, other then the initial visit on the day of their birth. The mother was sent home from the hospital whereupon she was eventually contacted by the hospital and informed that the infants would be sent to foster care if no one picked them up. So she went down to get them herself.

In spite of her original poor judgment in getting involved in this surrogacy for money scheme, she was rightfully awarded sole custody by the first hearing Judge, who conclude as any rational being would that there is NO EXCUSE whatsoever to not be there for your new-born infants every freakin day…you don’t leave three newborns in a hospital without even a visit no matter the insurance issues. Nor do you leave them in a hospital nursery long enough that someone else has to be contacted to pick them up or risk them being sent to foster care.

Additionally the children were in the custody of their mother for well over two years. Thus it was not in their best interests to be removed from the only home they had ever known and be handed over to this reckless sperm donor a few months ago. If the court couldn’t see it’s way to awarding her custody as the childrens’ actual mother, then surely it would have been on safe grounds to award her custody as the ‘psychological parent’.

Once again we see Judges ignoring the best interests of children in order to placate men.

This ruling is outrageous as was the initial one reversing custody of those poor kids.

We need to get a Three Strikes for Judges Law going in Pa and every other state in the union actually.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061028/ap_on_re_us/triplets_custody

Pa. court refuses surrogate mom's appeal
Sat Oct 28, 5:26 PM ET

PITTSBURGH - The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has refused to hear an appeal filed by a surrogate mother who lost custody of triplets she delivered nearly three years ago to their biological father.

A lower court had ruled in April that Danielle Bimber had no standing to challenge the custody rights of James Flynn, 65. Since then, the boys have lived with Flynn in Kirtland, Ohio.

The decision Tuesday means Bimber must now appeal to a federal court if she wants the case to continue. She did not return a phone call to The Associated Press on Saturday and it wasn't clear whether she plans to appeal.

"I knew there was a 95 percent chance that I wasn't going to get them back," Bimber told The Journal of Corry, Pa., for Friday's editions. "Now I know it's 100."

Still to be decided is a suit Flynn filed that seeks $350,000, which includes legal fees, child support and the $20,000 surrogate fee he paid Bimber to bear the children.

Flynn contracted with Bimber in 2001 and agreed to pay her to carry the babies for him and his girlfriend. The three boys were born in November 2003.

Bimber took the children home eight days later and raised them with her husband because, she said, Flynn and his girlfriend didn't name the children or visit them for several days. (emphasis mine: This comment in the article is misleading, as the hospital themselves contacted Bimber and told her they were ready to place the infants in foster care if no one came to get them. Thus this article is another example of bias against mothers in the media trying to mitigate the irresponsibility of the father's action here.)

Flynn and his girlfriend saw the children the day they were born and said insurance and medical issues related to the triplets' premature births kept them from visiting in the days afterward. (emphasis mine. Excuse me but bullcrap...there is NO excuse for not visiting or being with your newborn infants for eight days. NONE.)...

Friday, October 27, 2006

Shout-Out to a Brave Woman

I just want to give a so-called ‘shout-out’ to Marilyn Musgrave and a heartfelt thank you to her for her courage in trying to have Michael Schiavo escorted out of the Auditorium where she was giving a speech.

Thank you Ms. Musgrave.

I don’t know this women’s position on any other issues but I sincerely thank her from the bottom of my heart for having the courage to try to get this man evicted. Shunning people to let them know that you consider them repulsive is a practice that needs to be brought back into American life. It’s the equivalent of the community deciding that, although what you do might be legal, we as your neighbors still reserve the right to judge if it’s right.

So again thank you Ms. Musgrave for giving voice to the millions of Americans who felt that what Michael Schiavo was allowed to do by the courts was, although legal just not right.

Every once in a while a woman will do something extraordinarily courageous so even if is not a motherhood related issue, I will mention her on this blog.


http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/10/26/23514/100

My unreal night in Colorado - with radio link
by Michael Schiavo
Thu Oct 26, 2006 at 08:05:14 PM PDT


If it were fiction, you wouldn't believe it.

Sadly, what happened in Colorado on Tuesday is true and unbelievable.

At the conclusion of a three-day, three-state campaign trip to promote candidates who will bring needed new leadership to Washington, I flew to Ft. Collins, Colorado to attend the only "debate" between Congresswoman Marilyn Musgrave and her courageous and forceful challenger Angie Paccione in the Colorado 4th district.

What happened there made the clearest case I could ever imagine for why change isn't just needed - it's required.

That was Tuesday.

But before we even got to Colorado, I had a great meeting with Joe Sestak who's running an incredible campaign against Republican Curt Weldon in suburban Philadelphia. My PAC gave Sestak's campaign a $1,000 check to assist his efforts in restoring some sanity to Congress.

And I was impressed with Joe's candor, compassion and decency and I have no reservations in saying he'll be a great Congressman - they kind who will have the courage to stand up for our rights and the wisdom to know the difference between national policy and divisive politics.

Back to Tuesday in Colorado...a little background, first. Back in mid-July I travelled to Colorado and delivered a letter to Congresswoman Musgrave's office. asking her why she felt compelled to interfere in my family's personal affairs - questioning, in fact trying to refute the medical facts of my wife's case on the floor of Congress.

Not surprisingly, Marilyn Musgrave never responded to my letter.

So on Tuesday I joined about 1,000 citizens and members of the local and regional media in the Windsor High School Auditorium to hear the debate and try to get an answer to my question from Congresswoman Musgrave.

About twenty minutes before the debate started and after speaking to several reporters about how Musgrave had voted to transform her values into our laws, I took a seat in the front row. As it turned out, I was seated next to the timekeeper who held up yellow and red cards to signal time to the candidates.

But just minutes after taking my seat, I noticed a flurry of activity around my seat including about four uniformed police officers who were - I would learn later - called in by Musgrave staffers and asked to remove me from the building.

At this point, I had made no speeches, I had no signs, had made no attempt to disrupt or cause any commotion. I only came into the auditorium, spoke to a dozen or so reporters and took a seat.

To their credit, the police refused the Musgrave campaign's appeal to have me removed.

There's more to come, but I still can't get over even that part. A sitting member of Congress asked the police to remove me - a taxpaying citizen - from a public debate.

Obviously, I misunderstand the concept of a political debate. I thought a debate was a place to share ideas, answer questions, defend your record and tell citizens what you've done and what you will do. Marilyn Musgrave believes, I have to gather, that debates are places to have the police remove people who don't agree with you.

After the police talked with obviously irritated Musgrave staffers and the debate organizer, the Musgrave campaign complained that my seat, next to the timekeeper, was inappropriate because - get this - Marilyn Musgrave would have to look at me. In an effort to appease the Musgrave camp, the debate organizers moved the timekeeper to the other side of the stage - about 15 seats away.

If you need to re-read that again, it's okay. A member of Congress who took to the floor of our Congress to speak about my wife, my family and my values made the debate timekeeper move so she wouldn't have to look at me. Just amazing.

The "debate" went on for an hour and at two points the audience actually broke out into laughter at Musgrave. Once, in response to a question about health care when she said America had the best health care in the world and again when she said the 700 mile immigration fence Congress approved would stop immigrants and protect "our children from drug dealers."

I admit I'm new to politics, but it just can't be a good sign when a home-town crowd is laughing at their Congresswoman. But given who their member of Congress is, I understand it.

As if the evening weren't already strange enough, as the clock wound down on the debate I noticed about half a dozen Musgrave staffers and supporters gathering near the stairs to the stage. They were whispering and forming a line. It stuck me as odd but I soon discovered why they were there.

As soon as the moderator wrapped-up the evening, they rushed in front of me forming a human shield for Congresswoman Musgrave - trying to keep me from speaking to her.
I called out, "Marilyn, why won't you answer my question?" and "It's just one question." But, like before, she ignored me. And as I approached the stage with other debate watchers, Musgrave staffers surrounded me trying their best to shout over me silly things like, "We love you Marilyn" and "Way to Go! Marilyn!"

It was really lame.

And, no kidding, within seconds of the debate ending, three or four other Musgrave staffers ran on stage, took the Congresswoman by the arms and whisked her through a side door and into a waiting car. She not only avoided my question, she didn't take a single comment from a single voter or shake a single hand.

I will give her credit, though, Marilyn Musgrave may have been the first member of Congress with the courage to actually demonstrate for all of us what "cut and run" really looks like. Marilyn Musgrave's display was the sorriest excuse for Democracy I'm likely ever to see.

Angie Paccione, by contrast, acted like a Congresswoman and stayed on stage and in the room for nearly an hour after the debate talking to people and shaking hands.

But underneath it all I'm left with something I can't get past. Congresswoman Marilyn Musgrave, as I said, had no problem at all in speaking about me and my family on the floor of Congress. Yet she can't bring herself to even look at me. She has to seek help from the police to have me removed from a public debate.

It's crystal clear that Marilyn Musgrave not only can't admit she's wrong, she can't even face the consequences of her own actions. She must believe that if she runs away fast enough or surrounds herself with enough people who tell her she's great, it never happened.

Well, Marilyn, it did happen. You were wrong. And that you don't have the decency to admit it or even face me - even to disagree with me - is more than cowardice. It's un-American and disgusting.

Even though you'd rather not see it or hear it, Congresswoman Musgrave, your votes have consequences. What you do impacts real people. And a wall of staffers, police and debate complaints won't hide the truth.

After seeing Marilyn Musgrave in action, I hope more than ever before that voters in Colorado are wise enough to make a change. I just can't think of any better reason to dump her from Congress than her refusal to even see the people she hurts. I just don't know how you can get any worse than that.

Angie Paccione needs your help.

There's more at stake here than just a seat in Congress.

And there are real parallels between Mariyn's outrageous behavior on Tuesday and the course our country is on. Like Marilyn Musgrave, too many of our "leaders" in Washington just refuse to see what's happening in Iraq, they refuse to see the members of Congress in hand-cuffs, they refuse to see people still living in the tragedy of Katrina, they refuse to see our un-insured and homeless.

Like Musgrave, they'd rather run away than face any American who sees what's really going on.

Please, please, please help Angie Paccione.

America needs this Congress to be swept away and take Marilyn Musgrave with it.

UPDATE: Yesterday, I was a guest on the Ed Schultz radio show to talk about the Colorado debate debacle. They have audio of my interview up on their website, here.

Tags: Michael Schiavo, Terri Schiavo, Colorado, CO-04, PA-07, Pennsylvania, Joe Sestak, Congress, Angie Paccione, Marilyn Musgrave, TerriPAC, Recommended (all tags)