With the new movie Baby Mama out and Newsweek's recent article "The Curious Lives of Surrogates", the cultural gaze is on surrogacy in a semi-positive or at least ambivalent way.  In my experience, most people who know anything about surrogacy have read news stories about custody disputes, usually in poorly thought out situations where haste was the operating principle.  So it's kind of strange to see surrogacy pulled out of Geraldo world and plastered respectably on the cover of Newsweek.

When my husband and I made the decision to pursue surrogacy three years ago,   neither of us knew anyone, in real life, who had had children via surrogacy, or had been born that way.  There are several wonderful online communities where we got most of our information.

My husband and I have been debating the significance of Barack Obama's million donor success.  I am really hoping to convince him to vote for Obama in the fall, as he did for our primary.  But he is suspicious of the significance of the "individual donor" aspect of this feat.  His argument is that, like any campaign in our present system, Obama likely has lots of corporate support via collections of individual donors.  So I went to Wikipedia to read up on campaign finance in the United States.

I wish this were a report from the field, but as the morning turned out, it is merely a report from the neighborhood...  The neighborhood in Eau Claire, WI where Senator Obama appeared this afternoon at 1 p.m. to speak to an enthusiastic crowd of 3,500.  Sounds like a small number?  Well, it's not.  Follow me over the fold...

(Thank you accupajo for the link to the speech: WQOW-TV  **Click on the red projector above Obama's head to watch**)

You know that virtual fence that they are beginning to build on the borders of the U.S?  I'd almost forgot about it as if it were a bad dream, but it turns out the first segment of it was scheduled to be operable three months ago and -- guess what? -- it doesn't work.  A glitch, they report.

Sure, being new technology one might expect delays in the start up portion of the project, but a few things have me puzzled:

CNN is saying Tony Snow will be leaving his position within a month, because

I'm not going to be able to go the distance, but that's primarily for financial reasons." Snow said. "I've told people when my money runs out, then I've got to go."

The article goes onto say that Snow needs to help his family, including his college-bound children.   He only makes a piddling $168,000 as White House Spokesperson.  Not to mention that lucrative job he held at Fox, well, that was years ago.

I know when we discuss our frustrations with Congress here, talk often turns to how to get through to our elected officials.  We call, email, and write, never really sure how effective our efforts will be.  I know I've even broken down to pay for those hand-delivered letters, hoping the service is not a hoax.

A women's group in my community has decided it's time to do something more dramatic.  They are calling on anyone who feels unrepresented by their congressperson to send them some balls ... literally.

Tomorrow our twins will be born.  I'm not sure if this is a good time to post a diary, as I have to go to bed in a few hours, so I can wake up early.  My husband and I will meet our surrogate mom at the hospital for her induction.  She has made it to 38 weeks, which is quite a feat for a twin pregnancy.

As the day of their birth has approached, I have begun to naively hope that they could be born on day where there were no casualties in Iraq, no further impingements on our civil liberties, no hollow grandstanding by Republican congresspeople.  I guess I shouldn't call it naive, exactly, since I know it will not come to pass.

Sometimes it gets so crazy in this world -- people express their outrage comment by comment here and elsewhere -- that a rational question becomes why have kids?  I guess I found a lot of answers to that question, or we wouldn't have tried adoption and surrogacy for so long.  In the end, I want to help my children become caring, thoughtful, and empathetic.  Being progressive would be a bonus.  So I am soliciting advice... (more on the flip)

It seems that Senator Warner has managed to figure out how to water down an already watered-down resolution.  He is stipulating that while Congress is opposed to troop increases, they will do nothing to de-fund the current operations in Iraq.

It's funny, because I thought we had already done a lot to demonstrate that the majority of Americans are against the war, against escalation, and for return or redeployment of the troops.  I mean, heck, we voted accordingly last election; we've been expressing it in numerous polls, letters to the editors; 100,000 made it to DC in mid-January to protest which I think is a major demonstration of disapproval.

What more do we need to do?

Title updated to reflect main diary content
Not everybody gets to shake hands with Russ Feingold on their birthday, but I was given that treat tonight.  I told him that it was an honor to shake his hand and I tried to thank him for protecting our civil liberties, but it was a busy room and I hope he heard.  He asked about how long I'd lived in Wisconsin and where I was from, before he lost his voice and someone handed him a bottle of water.

Then I said that I enjoyed reading his posts on DailyKos and he thanked me for letting him know that in particular.

All this occured at an event for our local candidate for Wisconsin Senate (District 31), Kathleen Vinehout.  

But that was not the end of my "political" birthday....

I've been part of a coalition of women's organizations that is putting on a candidate forum this Monday in our city to introduce voters to where local candidates for the Wisconsin State Senate and Assembly stand on issues important to women.    We've been working on the forum for three months, spending time and money on advanced publicity, contacting and communicating with candidates, and drafting questions relevant to our communities in Northwest Wisconsin.

The Republican candidates have done a last minute pull-out.

(more on the flip)

I know, I know... another stem-cell diary.  But bear with me.  I write as someone who almost "crossed a moral boundary," and would have done so with a happy heart.  My husband and I are were going to among those with embryos in the freezer and this is our tale.

His imperial magesty, King George has proposed a new law that would give him line-item veto.  Anyone surprised by this effort to consolidate his power may not have been paying attention for the past six years...  However, it is prudent to note, as CNN does, that Clinton passed a similar law in 1996 that was struck down by the Supreme Court on the basis that it allowed the President to "single-handedly" change the law.  Evidently, Bush's proposal is different than Clinton's in that it specifies that he can propose striking special earmarks from budget bills -- his proposed strikes then get voted on by congress.  A similar bill was proposed by Sen. Byrd, and later by Sen. Kerry.  

Questions on the flip:

Tonight Matthew Rothschild, author of the web column "McCarthyism Watch" at The Progressive, came to speak at our University.  His topic was "Losing Our Liberties: Life in the Bush Era" and he began with a catalog of many of the disturbing events that he and others have publicized during which people's basic first amendment rights and civil liberties have  been limited or trampled upon.

I didn't go expecting to hear anything new and, just like others have expressed here, I am experiencing outrage fatigue.  But it's always good to be in an auditorium full of progressives and filling a seat is a small way of showing support.

What I hadn't counted on was Auden.

I know everyone's outrage meters are pegged, popped, kerfluey, but I'd like to call attention to yet another budget cut.  Even Start, a program designed to improve literacy in low-income families, has been eliminated by Bush in the new budget. [http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2006/02/07/bush_budget_would_slash_aid_to_state/ Link to Boston Globe article that refers to the program's elimination]

Below the fold I will provide some basic information about the program, as well as some evidence as to why literacy education is so necessary in this country.

More below the fold

Ever the voice of sanity, Paul Krugman has taken on the media's insistence on providing "balanced" coverage on the Abramoff scandal when there is no balance.  As diarists have been decrying for weeks, he calls out media representatives, such as Katie Couric, who continue to depict the Abramoff scandal as "bipartisin."  

Beginning with a quote from a Daily Show dialogue between Rob Cordry and Jon Stewart where Cordry assers that "facts in Iraq have an anti-Bush agenda," Krugman draws a parralel to the current coverage of Abramoff.  

I've been calling Feingold and Kohl for the past two weeks and have always been able to get through easily.  Well, four minutes ago I picked up the phone to give Russ another push in the direction of the filibuster and I got that old-fashioned message that goes:

Doo-doo-DOO!  All circuits are busy.  Please try back at a later time.

Was I frustrated?  No, elated!  Keep those calls coming, people.  Even as we sit here and analyze the situation, realizing as Armando says that it's going to take a "miracle" to pull off a filibuster, I believe it is still worth simultaneously showing our senators that they have our support for a filibuster.  The only chance we have to make a difference is to show them that we are behind them 150% on this vote.  (I guess in Chicago that means calling early and often...)

Robert Bryce has a good article up on Salon.com about the latest cronies that Bush has appointed to the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board: Top-secret cronies

Evidently Bush doesn't want anyone pointing out bad intelligence when it comes his way, so he's stacked the Board with pals from the "Halliburton-Texas Rangers-oil business crony club."  (see below)

Not that torture isn't going on in Iraq all the time, but how often is it graphically reported?

The New York Times is reporting that American and Iraqi troops have discovered a torture lair where up to 160 detainees, mainly Sunni, have been held without food.  Many exhibit signs of torturing including bruises, wounds, and peeling skin.

The discovery of what appeared to have been a secret torture center created a new aura of crisis for American officials and Iraqi politicians who hold power in the Shiite-led transitional government. For many Iraqis, the episode carried heavy overtones of the brutality associated with Saddam Hussein and his Sunni-dominated government.