Wow... Hopefully they get taken away...

Fox News

SCHENECTADY, N.Y. — A woman had her 5-year-old daughter and 2-month-old son with her as she took drugs and performed sex for money, New York police said.

Wendy Cook, 37, of Saratoga was arrested along with four other women during a prostitution sweep early Monday, according to Schenectady Police Lt. Brian Kilcullen.

Cook was arrested when she offered to perform a sex act on an undercover officer for money, Kilcullen said.

While Cook's children were in the car with her, she performed sex acts on at least two men for money, smoked crack cocaine in the car and even snorted cocaine off the infant's stomach while she was breastfeeding, Kilcullen said.

Cook is in Schenectady County Jail without bail on charges of prostitution and child endangerment, pending a court appearance Tuesday. Her children were turned over to family members.

On the News tonight:

Brian Williams

The possible connection between thimerosal, a mercury preservative that was widely used in childhood vaccines through the 1990s, and autism, the common developmental disorder, is a difficult story to report. Autism leaves many children unable to communicate with the world, including their parents. Often the children are disabled in many ways. Caring for an autistic child is one of the greatest burdens any parent could face. Because mercury can indeed be a poison to the nerves and because children are often diagnosed at the time they get vaccinated, it is easy to understand why many parents would make the connection.

A federal study, out today in the New England Journal of Medicine, looked at the connection between a mercury-based preservative and children’s vaccine. It does not directly concern autism, but it is very closely related to the ongoing dispute. Scientists from the Centers for Disease Control headed the effort where 1,047 children, aged 7 to 10 years, underwent a battery of tests measuring language, verbal skills, intelligence and fine motor coordination. Because the children were enrolled in large health insurance groups the scientists had good data on how much themerosal they had been exposed to earlier in life. For the vast majority of measurements the scientists did not find any correlations between thimerosal exposure and these neurophysiologic outcomes.

Many scientists outside the study say it would be difficult to see how thimerosal could cause something as severe as autism without causing huge changes in these measurable parameters.

You can see the study itself at content.nejm.org.

Two things to note: This is certainly not the end of this argument. Until researchers truly understand the cause of autism, no hypothesis can be ruled out. And parents who are now getting their children immunized should realize that, with the exception of some formulations of flu vaccine, there is no more than the smallest trace amounts in thimerosal remaining in any childhood vaccine.

**SIGH**
Well, I'm still not convinced...

In the News...

Prince and YouTube

Now you all know that I'm a Prince fan... but this is a little over the top, even for him. I understand protecting your music, but at the risk of losing fans??? Doesn't he remember what happened when Metallica took on Napster????? *sigh* When people watch videos on YouTube they are just enjoying the videos/music - not stealing anything...

Fred Durst

When did Fred Durst get so OLD??? He doesn't look too shabby though, does he? :-) Man I used to love Limp Bizkit!

Break Stuff is a perfect song for when you are having a REALLY bad day! LOL Then again you could always try Drowning Pool Let the Bodies Hit the Floor (Hey, Wizard, you might not wanna listen, your ears will burn from the cursing hahaha)

I bring up Fred Durst cuz I guess he got arrested a few days ago.

Poor Britney....

I don't know why she just didn't cancel... Last night's VMA performance

I know lots of ppl online talk about how fat she is and whatever - and granted she's not as buff as she was before she had two babies in a row and was still #1 but geez, I'd love to look half as good as she did lol... Her performance was HORRIBLE though - she really is a has been... Fame isn't good for everyone. (Her song wasn't bad, just her performance - or lack of performance - lip sync, no dancing, etc.)

And apparently Kid Rock didn't really like Tommy Lee flirting with Pamela Anderson when she was a presenter... (Fight) I read that Kid Rock COULD get 6mos in jail for this but I'm sure he won't...

Liftoff!

Charles, Ally, Trey and I sat and watched the Shuttle Atlantis liftoff this evening. Trey thought it was about the coolest thing. Ally was distracted as usual, lol.

Now we are sitting here watching The Situation Room on CNN listening to a special episode of Faith (or something like that - read more about it here if you are interested...) Actually we hate politics, and really aren't that interested in religious tv in general, but we wanted to hear Obama, and we actually stuck around to listen to Hillary (gag)...

Now if you know us at ALL, you know that we NEVER watch the news - especially CNN... but today was different because we wanted to keep track of Paris Hilton and watch her butt hauled back to jail where it should be! LOL Yup, it takes a major event to get us glued to CNN - its only happened a few times before... Hurricane Katrina, the trapped miners, and Ms. Hilton. LOL!!!

Being Vegan wasn't the whole problem people!

Ripped from the headlines: Vegans sentenced for starving their child

There are so many things wrong with this story, I don't know where to begin. First of all, and maybe most obvious... um - babies don't EAT MEAT so who gives a rodent's gludious maximus if the parent's are Vegans??? Secondly, and this is a real question for me, as a vegan, why didn't the mother just breastfeed? I mean I realize its not EASY for everyone and it often requires assistance to get things going, but vegans are more often than not health conscious people. Human Milk for Human Babies?? Ok, thirdly, they SHOULD get in troulbe if they starved this baby. Soy milk and apple juice? Feeding this to a 6wk old? How old are these parents??? [27 and 31??? They should have known better... I expected them to be 16 and 17 or something] I mean, granted there are no "vegan baby formulas" because most people who are vegans would choose to breastfeed. But anyway, my whole rant is due to the fact that the baby didn't (necessarily) die because they were vegans - the baby died because they weren't feeding it. I mean, I realize that a diet of only soy milk and apple juice would be FAR from ideal, but still, if they fed it ENOUGH of that, you wouldn't think it would have died.

I do see why people are saying the vegan lifestyle is the cause of this baby's death, I'm not denying that it was a big factor. All I'm saying is, they are making it out like vegans are the devil...
Poor poor little baby, how he must have suffered. :-( Makes me very sad.

Very bad news

My MIL called last night to tell us that her nephew's daughter was in the hospital in a medically induced coma because she was having severe pain in her legs. They were having to keep her under because the pain was so horrific when she was conscious and there was no clue what was wrong with her. At first they said there was no way to get an MRI until Monday morning, but they were able to get one first thing this morning. And the diagnosis is cancer. We are unsure yet exactly what kind or what stage or anything like that and we are not likely to get accurate info because by the time we get the information it will be like fourth hand or something, but supposedly the prognosis is very good for this specific kind of cancer and they caught it very early. Apparently the cancer is in the bone, but again, that's about fourth-hand info, so we really don't know for sure. We aren't very close to this couple and their family anymore since we moved and they moved, but when we all lived in the same city back in the day, the little girl's mom used to have a daycare and watched Sydney and the two girls were good buddies. They are still friends online as they play their Webkinz together alot. :-( They have a relatively large family (they have five kids) so she will have lots of support in her battle.

Anna Nicole Smith Dies

I'm really not one to really follow all that goes on in Hollywood and with the rich and famous. Anna Nicole Smith is no exception to that, although when she was a Playboy model, I did appreciate that she was curvy and not emaciated like so many models look. Its a sad day for her little baby girl, who has to grow up knowing her brother and her mom died only 6 mos apart.

Anna Nicole Smith
Nov. 28, 1967 - Feb. 8, 2007