Nor do any of those other republican blowhards.

When they've had to spend years having bake sales, fundraisers, sending their kids door to door selling wrapping paper, all so that the district can shave another few days off the school calendar to save money... they will STFU about high taxes.

I would HAPPILY pay more in taxes so that my children (and everyone else's children) could get a better education.

The childless benefit from a strong education system when talented bright young engineers, journalists, doctors, and entrepreneurs show up in the work force. They suffer from a weak education system when their new hire can't write a sentence or do simple math. They just don't want to admit it.

Who do they think is going to be doing their heart surgery when they're 85? Or calculating the dosages for their medications? Someone who is in elementary school today, and just might be getting a shoddy education.

I think it's time for a mob riot to remind Wall Street bankers that $500,000 IS in fact a hell of a lot of money to most of the country.

Hooray for Obama. Finally, some fiscal sense coming into this bank bailout. So, let me see. They'll have to sell a boat? Give up that fifth car? Rent out the vacation home? Fire the nanny so the stay-at-home kept mom can't play tennis at 10:00 a.m. on a Tuesday before having her nails done? Oh the privation! Oh the humanity! Maybe she'll have to sell her handbag collection on eBay, he'll have to downgrade his scotch brand.

What they fail to realize is that ANY society is only seven missed meals away from anarchy.

My heart is with you. I'm glad you're still with us, I'm glad you told your story. No one should have to live through what you did. Keep talking. Keep telling. We need to hear you. Don't let anyone sweep your story under the rug.

Coraline, and her mother, and her father, and the whole story, are BRITISH.

The American movie company, Laika Studios, in Portland, Oregon, together with whoever wrote the screenplay, set it in America with American voices for the characters.

So... what does this story say about the contemporary BRITISH family?

Or is it, in fact, just a story?

Do a little homework before you start looking for morals under every rug.

This sentence is the best:

"If you cut taxes on the rich and then the rich drive the economy into a ditch, your position of moral superiority becomes shaky."

Fantastic. Perfect.

Hi there Fungez,

You suggested that we give Ty'Sheoma Bethea (and anyone else who wants one) a voucher. So she can go to the school of her choice.

Fine. However, any school that accepts government money in the form of school vouchers has to do the following:

--accept their fair share of the difficult to educate kids (learning disabled, blind, autistic, cerebral palsy, ADHD, what-have-you).

--provide all the therapists and specialists that the public schools have to to make sure that everyone gets a good education. This means speech therapists, occupational therapists, resource room teachers, and so on.

I think you'll find that the local Neighborhood Christian School can't and is not willing to do this. They'd love the government funds in the form of vouchers, but they don't want the hard part--giving a valid education to EVERY child. Cherry-picking the easy kids is not OK. Hell, I could probably educate the easy kids, and I'm not a teacher.

I agree. There are lots of reasons why people support school vouchers, and all of them are thinly veiled attempts at getting white middle-class and upper-middle-class kids out of the public schools.

As you could probably guess, I'm the parent of a special needs kid, and part of my job is to continually advocate for him and work with his teachers to get what he needs. The school voucher crowd makes my brain hurt.

It had the advantage of being within a mile of my house, reasonably priced, where I could get decent kids clothes without spending a fortune or driving for miles.

Target clothes literally fall apart within one season. Mervyns clothes, especially their house brand (High Sierra) held together much better, for about the same price.

I'm very sorry to hear that they stiffed their employees in the end. It's not like anyone working there was making any money to speak of.

A woman who works a white-collar job in an office can usually manage a way to pump. Even if it's not ideal, even if it's in a broom closet or icky company locker room, there's SOMEWHERE she can go.

We can't say the same for a whole host of wage-slave jobs, like restaurant work, house cleaners, assembly line workers, janitors, gas station attendants, grocery clerks, and any kind of shift-work, where workers clock in and out, and every minute of absence is noticed and messes up someone else.

Those women need to breastfeed too. Those women have children, and those women are the least likely to get any kind of paid maternity leave, the most likely to return to work when their babies are extremely young, and the least likely to continue breastfeeding.

I worked and pumped for a year, then transitioned to a sort of hybrid where I nursed when I was home (evenings, naps, weekends), and the kids had table food and cow's milk with their meals. Nursing isn't an all-or-nothing thing, it's a supply-and-demand thing. Those women who have an inhospitable work situation need to be encouraged that some is better than none, and they need to learn how to be a part-time nurser. It can be done.

Obviously it would be nice to guarantee a place and time to pump for every woman. But until then? We all need to be a little more flexible about nursing. Some nursing is better than none, and giving a baby formula to keep a job is not child abuse.