Rhode Frog: My glass - still half full, I guess (sigh)

I am not a happy frog. I have whooping cough. Believe me, it feels as bad as it sounds. I can't talk. I'm out of work for the week (and slowly going insane here. I've already killed off one book and three movies) and I can't do the AIDs Walk. That hurts. But I can't risk passing this atypical bronchitis to anyone with HIV/AIDs.

I am thankful that the members of my team are doing so well, but I had plans. I had places to go, people to ask for money, fundraising ass to kick. And then I was going to do the walk - take tons of pictures, win something, eat free donuts, hug Snoopy, get my umbrella, and laugh for 4 miles with my favorite people on earth. And I can't even cry about it - I'll just feel worse.

And my car is still sitting in the parking lot at work. I never thought I'd miss crawling into it in the morning and battling the Cumberland Hill traffic while trying to get a friggin coffee (oh God, how I miss coffee). The morning commute is a sweet thing.
I'll try that counting-of-blessings thing. Yeah yeah - nice place to live, people who love me, stimulus check. Best co-workers ever, who miss me and send me love. Great team of committed fundraisers for the walk. Health insurance and a great doctor. For sleeping for the first time all week last night. For general's chicken from Asia last night. And my froggy momma, who has brought me tissues, food, movies, books, pills, a ride to the doctor, and hugs for my germy hide.
Don't hate me for still loving my life.

Bits & Pieces

Senator Al Franken has proposed a "Pay for War" resolution that would require Congress to raise taxes and/or cut spending before authorizing new acts of war, so that American foreign adventures can't contribute to the national debt.

In "The Long Road Home," historian Ben Shephard tells the neglected story of the refugee crisis the Allies faced when, at war's end, millions of displaced persons -- among them prisoners of war, slave laborers and survivors of concentration camps -- had to be repatriated to their homelands or resettled somewhere else.

For most of the last century, talk of secession, nullification and the rest of the extreme states-rights lexicon were relegated to the fringiest parts of the political fringe. But since Barack Obama entered the White House in January 2009, mainstream Republican rhetoric and proposed legislation at the state level have both warmed to the hoary idea that state governments can take their relationship with the federal government on what amounts to an a la carte basis or perhaps abandon it altogether.

Is the tantalizing dream of a universal library dead? Some scholars and librarians across the country fear it may be, now that a federal judge in New York has derailed Google’s bold plan to build the world’s largest digital library and bookstore.

...the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office... finds that a large part of the supposed savings from spending cuts would go, not to reduce the deficit, but to pay for tax cuts. In fact, the budget office finds that over the next decade the plan would lead to bigger deficits and more debt than current law.

...Republicans in Mississippi are divided over a wholly different wedlock issue: interracial marriage.

Nobel-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz writes in this month's Vanity Fair about the corrosive, self-reinforcing wealth concentration that has hijacked American politics, in which the America's future is sacrificed to give ever more money to an ever-smaller group of oligarchs.

My glass - still half full, I guess (sigh)

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