Hypocrisy Abounds

This message is approved only by Chrissie, not Dan, who is tired of my ranting about the Presidential election and Republican hypocrisy (Yes - both parties do it, but the R's do it worse!).

I don't have a source for this, but it is making the rounds on the internet (thank you, Court, for forwarding it to me!). Those of you reading our blog probably already know this, but maybe you can use it to point it out to others who don't. We're looking at a long four years (and then perhaps another 8 with President Palin - YIKES!).

* If you're a minority and you're selected for a job over more qualified candidates you're a "token hire."
* If you're a conservative and you're selected for a job over more qualified candidates you're a "game changer."

* Black teen pregnancies? A "crisis" in black America .
* White teen pregnancies? A "blessed event."

* If you grow up in Hawaii you're "exotic."
* Grow up in Alaska eating mooseburgers, you're the quintessential "American story."

* Similarly, if you name you kid Barack you're "unpatriotic."
* Name your kid Track, you're "colorful."

* If you're a Democrat and you make a VP pick without fully vetting the individual you're "reckless."
* A Republican who doesn't fully vet is a "maverick."

* If you spend 3 years as a community organizer growing your organization from a staff of 1 to 13 and your budget from $70,000 to $400,000, then become the first black President of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter registration drive that registers 150,000 new African American voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor, then spend nearly 8 more years as a State Senator representing a district with over 750,000 people, becoming chairman of the state Senate's Health and Human Services committee, then spend nearly 4 years in the United States Senate representing a state of nearly 13 million people, sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works and Veteran's Affairs committees, you are woefully inexperienced.
* If you spend 4 years on the city council and 6 years as the mayor of a town with less than 7,000 people, then spend 20 months as the governor of a state with 650,000 people, then you've got the most executive experience of anyone on either ticket, are the Commander in Chief of the Alaska military and are well qualified to lead the nation should you be called upon to do so because your state is the closest state to Russia.

* If you are a Democratic male candidate who is popular with millions of people you are an "arrogant celebrity."
* If you are a popular Republican female candidate you are "energizing the base."

* If you are a younger male candidate who thinks for himself and makes his own decisions you are "presumptuous."
* If you are an older male candidate who makes last minute decisions you refuse to explain, you are a "shoot from the hip" maverick.

* If you are a candidate with a Harvard law degree you are "an elitist-out of touch" with the real America .
* If you are a legacy (dad and granddad were admirals) graduate of Annapolis with multiple disciplinary infractions you are a hero.

* If you manage a multi-million dollar nationwide campaign, you are an "empty suit."
* If you are a part time mayor of a town of 7000 people, you are an "experienced executive."

* If you go to a south side Chicago church, your beliefs are "extremist."
* If you believe in creationism and don't believe global warming is man made, you are "strongly principled."

* If you have been married to the same woman with whom you've been wed to for 19 years and raising 2 beautiful daughters with, you're "risky.
*If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and left your disfigured wife and married the heiress the next month, you're a
Christian.

* If you're a black single mother of 4 who waits for 22 hours after her water breaks to seek medical attention, you're an irresponsible parent, endangering the life of your unborn child.
* But if you're a white married mother who waits 22 hours, you're spunky.

* If you're a 13-year-old Chelsea Clinton, the right-wing press calls you "First dog."
* If you're a 17-year old pregnant unwed daughter of a Republican, the right-wing press calls you "beautiful" and "courageous."

* If you teach responsible age appropriate sex education, including the proper use of birth control, you are eroding the fiber of society.
* If you teach abstinence only in sex education, you get teen parents.

Pick Your President Contest

The Washington Post is hosting a "Pick Your President" contest where you predict who will win what state, and thus, the entire election. Chrissie's picks - entitled "Who Needs Florida!?" - are below. Note that Dan does not approve this message (though the competitive side of him might have to do his own map now!).

<p><strong>><a href="http://projects.washingtonpost.com/2008/pick-your-president/">2008 Election Contest: Pick Your President</a></strong> - Predict the winner of the 2008 presidential election and enter to win a $500 prize.</p>

Poor Jeb.

(It's been an unusually busy day for the staff of Just Bloggin'. To put this post into context, see the posts below.)

Jeb speaks on school-voucher ruling.
(http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/news_politics/2008/09/jeb-speaks-on-s.html)

Former Gov. Jeb Bush has ended his long silence Wednesday over the school-voucher amendments the Florida Supreme Court struck from the November ballot.

"It is extremely disappointing the Florida Supreme Court ruled today to deny millions of Florida voters the right to make their voices heard on improving the quality of education in our state," Bush said in a statement released by his foundation.

"Florida is facing serious challenges. Our economy experienced its first quarter of negative growth in 16 years. Tax revenues are declining.

“Now, more than ever, Floridians should have a voice in determining – not just how much they are taxed – but how their tax dollars are spent."

Bush suffered one of his greatest political defeats in January 2006 when the high court ruled his Opportunity Scholarship voucher program ran afoul of the state Constitution's requirement for creating a high-quality free public school system.

Amendments 7 and 9 were designed to erode that constitutional underpinning of the court's action ,as well as striking language prohibiting state funding for "sectarian institutions" that a lower court had also used to rule against the vouhcer program.

Supporters have argued the amendments were needed to protect other specialized voucher programs for disabled children or those sponsored by the private sector.

But although the amendments were drafted by former Bush staffers, the former governor himself has kept mostly mum on the subject.

"Amendment 9 would have empowered Floridians with the ability to ensure their tax dollars were spent in the classroom on people and programs that make a difference in student achievement – a principled fiscal policy that becomes increasingly important during these tough budget years," Bush continued.

"Perhaps even more heartbreaking is the realization that Floridians will not have the opportunity to protect important programs, including the McKay Scholarship for students with developmental disabilities and Corporate Tax Credit Scholarships for students in low-income families. These programs, as well as 350 charter schools in our great state, will remain in limbo, under the real threat of litigation from individuals who want to centralize all education decisions within government bureaucracies."

Victory in Florida!

An update from Florida. (See below for an earlier posting on the subject).

This afternoon, the Florida Supreme Court unanimously ruled that Ballot Initiatives Nos. 7 and 9 (which would allowed the voters to approve changes to the religion and education clauses of the Florida Constitution) were unconstitutionally proposed by Florida's Taxation and Budget Reform Commission.

For a copy of the order, click here.

Florida Happenings

On September 3rd, the Florida Supreme Court heard oral argument in Ford, et. al. v. Browning, a case which seeks to remove 2 ballot initiatives from the November 2008 ballot. The proposed initiatives would amend the Florida Constitution to allow public funds to be used for religious purposes and to allow private/religious school voucher programs. Dan has been working with the National Education Association and the Florida Education Association to try and get these ballot initiatives kicked off the ballot. For copies of the briefs -- click here.

Hopefully, we'll have a decision soon! And a video link to the oral argument should follow as well...

UPDATE: While I'm having trouble posting the video directly, click here to see the argument in windows media player, or click here to see it in real video. Don't expect to see Dan, though. He was in DC watching it online.

The Julianos Take D.C.

Last week, the Julianos made the trek to D.C. to drop Chrissie's sister, Marissa, off at GW! Wednesday night we had a bbq with Jim, Rhonda, Ali, and special guest Ezra Zibel (who we were watching while his parents shopped at Ikea). Thursday night, we took in a Washington Nationals game! See pics below.


Ali, with Chrissie and Ezra



Ezra just waking up from a nap on Uncle Dan




Once Ezra was awake, we let him watch Bill Clinton's speech with her (tv isn't all bad, is it?), he wasn't nearly as bored as he looks in this pic.


Thursday night at the game


(Rhonda, if you haven't figured it out yet, took all the pictures)

Rewind....

More pictures of Ezra from Rehoboth Beach. You know, this kid just does NOT get enough attention...

A Few Pictures from Grady's Birthday Party!

Courtney and Travis's son turned one last week! While we did not get to attend the party in person, we did get some pictures of what looked like a very fun event. See below.

This is the card we sent Grady (Grady's mom knows how to make Chrissie feel good by including it in the pictures!)



Early in the party, Grady is all about the balloons!



But now that he gets to open presents, the balloons are not as important. As many parents, aunts/uncles, grandparents, etc. have learned, sometimes the gift of paper is best!



Finally, Grady digs into his first ever birthday cake.

Beach Weekend Part II

This past weekend (and Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday), we were in New York for Carol's (Chrissie's mom) 60th birthday. We had fabulous weather for all but one day out in Southold, which as you can see from the map is on the north fork of Long Island (the tab on the map is where we stayed).


D

To celebrate the big 60, we had an excellent meal at the North Fork Table and Inn. The food was out of this world, as was the dessert. Below are the pictures we took before and at dinner.







We also toured some Long Island wineries (which are not as bad as you may think) and did a nice little kayak in the marshes of Orient Beach State Park. Sorry to report we did not take any pictures in the kayak (we were in a double so it would have been hard).

That's all we got for now. Dan is off to lovely Fayetteville, NC for work next week, but I doubt he'll take any pictures!

Beach Weekend Part I

The first weekend in August we did a beach weekend in Dewey with the Zibel/Kolb clan. Check out the pics (mostly of our nephew Ezra)!

Coming soon: Pics from our most recent beach weekend in NY for Carol's (Chrissie's mom) 60th birthday.

And Then There Was Color!

So the kitchen is painted!!!! They need to come back and do a little touch up, but it's mostly done. And go us, we like the color.

It's hard to tell from the pics below, but we tried to capture the color. We also had the upstairs bath painted, which we will share when it is done (other stuff needs to be finalized, the paint is done).

We're off to the beach on Friday morning (with Ezra and the rest of the Zibel/Kolb clan), so enjoy your respective heat wave weekends!

Tried to do a close up here:



Under the bar (stools to come):



And in the context of the kitchen:

Granite? Who Needs Granite!

Many months ago, while just in the planning stages for the kitchen, we picked out the world's most expensive granite (we didn't know it at the time). As we were trying to reduce the price tag on the kitchen, we opted to go with silestone, a quartz composite that is more environmentally friendly and allegedly better than granite (even though it does not have the chi-chi value that granite does). It was also the original counter material we wanted (before falling in love with the previously mentioned granite).

NOW, we look wise beyond our years! Yesterday's New York Times article about radon seems to have started a firestorm of granite warnings (maybe it wasn't the NYT article that started, but that's what started it for me!). If you haven't heard about the granite-cancer connection, check out the Times story and this Washington Post blog.

While I am totally using this to make us look smart, this will probably get filed in the same category as "saccharin and Nutrasweet might give you cancer," but we all drink it anyway. In the meantime, however, lots of soccer moms are going to be very stressed!

Let There Be Light!

So the kitchen folks were back yesterday to put in 2 of the 3 pendant lights - the last one is backordered. The light by the back door (which might have been the worse specimen of everything that has been removed) was also replaced.

Today we had a different electrician come to put in the new chandelier.

Now that the electrical work is done the painting can commence! On Monday, the kitchen, upstairs bath, and various touch up work downstairs will begin.

We have decided we live in a totally different house than the one we bought 2 years ago!

See pics below.

Wall-E (And EVE)

Wall-E is the cutest movie I've seen in a long time. It's a love story with a healthy dose of social commentary - they earth is SO polluted that all the humans had to leave and go to space. And in space, they have all become slovenly. But the humans aren't the main characters. Wall-E is a robot left behind to clean up and EVE is a droid sent.. oh wait, don't want to ruin it for you. SEE IT!

Coming up soon: My review of the Dark Knight (hopefully we will see it this weekend!).

Changes to our blog...

In case anyone out there is reading... wanted to highlight the changes to our blog. I am trying to make it a little more dynamic, adding links to our friends sites, barackobama.com, and pandemicfluandyou.com (my organization's micro-site on pan flu information). Really, I am just trying to compete with Dan's new facebook obsession. So I'm working on making it an interesting site. Let us know if you have suggestions!

FINALLY... some new pics!

Sorry for the long delay in posting... we meant to update over the holiday weekend, but getting the house back together seemed a bit more important.

SO, the pics below illustrate and almost done kitchen. The pendant lights are still on back order and painting won't be done until the end of the month, but it looks pretty much what it is going to look like and we love it! And most of our stuff has found it's new home in the cabinets.

The plumber was here again yesterday so we finally have working ice maker/filtered water to drink.




The hood went in early last week and the exhaust fan nearly blew us away as it is really powerful.

Our afternoon with Ezra

On Saturday afternoon, we got to spend a wonderful afternoon w/ our favorite nephew.  Click here for photos of our fun day with Ezra.

For those of you who are simply interested in our kitchen, the latest update is below (including photos).

What a week!

So we apologize for the lack of photographic updates to the blog.  It's been quite a week.  We survived the Great Israeli Countertop Scandal of 2008 and have suddenly found ourselves with a functioning kitchen!

The counters went in last Thursday.  The backsplash tile also went in last Thursday.  On Friday the plumber came to hook up the appliances. (Sadly, he had to come back on Saturday -- but that's neither here nor there.)  The plumber should be coming back on Monday to hook the water/ice line up for the fridge and to put our much-needed heat in.   At some point, the electrician needs to come back to finish the lights.  The hood also needs to be put up. We assume that's happening in the very near future.

But as you can see -- we've got a kitchen!  The pictures don't quite do it justice.

We have counters!

We apologize for the lack of pictures, but we are happy to report that we do in fact have countertops!

And, we love the last minute substitution more than the original one we picked out.

Fingers crossed that our appliances go in today. We will post pictures over the weekend!

Countergate

So hopefully, countergate is coming to an end. We met with Joe on Tuesday morning, to select new counters. Needless to say, we're sticking with non-Israeli counters, as apparently the counter top industry in Israel is in the middle of a crisis. Oy vey.

Anyhow -- we've moved onward to a coffee brown silestone, a material which which should match the kitchen quite well. Apparently, it's somewhat environmentally friendly quartz. The current plan is for the counters to be installed on Thursday, with the plumber coming on Friday to get us functional.