After getting into it briefly with a pal on another site, it is apparent that I may be confusing some people: saying that it is normal to for researchers to play the political game when appealing for funding – a reality of government-funded research, and harshly chastizing a handful of researchers for shoddy research practices. I don’t think I made clear enough the distinction between ethical research practices, and the effect of monetary pressures on those ethical tenets held by the researchers. As a young scientist, I don’t really care about what a researcher says their results mean. This stuff gets debated all the time, it gets semantically gets nit picked, but it really isn’t the most important part of published research findings. As a scientist, what is important – vital – to my practice of science, is that researchers fully disclose their experimental procedure (what did they do, how did the do it) and their results including how they treated their experimental data. When I talk about maintaining the integrity of science, I am talking about the very practice of science, and conveying it to the scientific community, because it is thenceforth transferred to society.

I also don’t place too much importance on what society thinks of my results, but I do care about what society thinks is important to study. Truth be told, I’m a huge geek, and if society decided it was really super important to study poop, I wouldn’t be thrilled, but I would find some way to advance what we can do with science and technology by studying poop. It is not my job to corroborate the leanings of politicians, or anyone else for that matter. What matters to me is that the results I report are sound, obtained from well-executed experiments, and reported in full detail, so that other scientists may know what I have done and how I did, should they wish to check my accuracy, or contrast their own studies to mine. I might not like that I get argued with, and that other data could disagree with mine, but as a scientist, I must be committed to upholding the best methodology and the best model of scientific accuracy. That I will do so is crucial to the advancement of science, and it is not possible to discern between models if I do not honestly report the science.

So, I may have reached my limit, in terms of how many consecutive waking hours I can actually spend at a computer, doing what amounts to computational physics modeling on my data from October’s Brookhaven trip. Hence, the temporary increase in posting. Got this email from a friend. Since it contains details related to said person’s personal life, I’ve changed all the names around, and referenced said changes with asterisks. The only thing I will add is that this friend and his significant other are fellow chemistry graduate students and friends of Dr. Boyfriend.

This is sort long and is mainly me venting. I apologize in advance.

A little over a year ago I met *Karen’s friend *Alison and her live-in boyfriend *William. I was not impressed with either of these individuals. Seeing as how I sum people up and make my character decisions about most everyone within the first couple seconds I meet them (and my track record is sterling with me being right in all but probably one of my initial summations), I opted to have no more to do with them than Karen’s friendship with Alison necessitated I would. Encounters have been few and brief but everything I’ve seen has backed up the opinion I formed in that first few seconds. They’re immature drama queens (both of them) who, while perhaps perfect for each other, contribute nothing to the world in any fashion. They’re not worth my time.

A few months ago William had some family emergency and had to return home to the Baltimore/Washington area for an indeterminate amount of time. Alison went with him. Despite the fact both had been laid off and were living on unemployment they put their dog, Nova, in to day care at the cost of around $35 a day. After two weeks away Alison called Karen and asked if she would pick Nova up every now and then so he’d have someone to play with and be able to run around outside a little. Karen, saint that she is, brought him home with her.

Nova is part pitbull, and as one might expect given his immature and irresponsible owners, not very well trained. He shows no respect for authority, barely responds to most commands and not at all to others, chews up everything and is housebroken only in the sense he usually usually goes out on to the balcony to pee and poop. In the space of less than ten minutes he destroyed literally every toy our dogs had. You could take him outside and let him run for an hour, he could go to the bathroom and less than five minutes after arriving back up he would relieve himself on the living room carpet.

Nova and I didn’t get along. Despite that he stayed in my home for six weeks until Alison and William finally came home. Had I been able to find out which kennel he had been boarded at I would have taken him back myself. Karen, however, didn’t want a friend with money troubles to be forced to spend a thousand dollars even if it meant I would be a little pissed off.

Now comes your red curtain of blood:

Despite both being unemployed with no active prospects for that ending any time soon, Alison and William are now trying to have a baby as fast as they possibly can. Judging by their dog……

And that ain’t all. Since they were both laid off they’ve been collecting unemployment benefits. Those benefits had been set to run out before Congress extended them in November at a cost to us, the working taxpayers, of over $140 billion. They went from staring down the barrel of financial destitution to still okay for a little while longer thanks to good ol’ Uncle Sam. What are they doing with these extended benefits? Cutting back in case they do eventually run out and they haven’t been able to find work? Saving so they’ll be able to support the new baby I pray isn’t on the way? Nope. They got up early last Friday to make the after Thanksgiving sales where they spent $1000 of your tax dollars on a brand new big screen TV and a Nintendo Wii.

To kick you while you’re down, Karen somehow found out and they make more combined on unemployment compensation than Karen and I (two highly educated professionals) make in salary working.

Folks, *this* is one reason why I’m pissed at our government. True, some people will do the responsible thing and be fiscally conservative with their unemployment checks. I mean, surely, some people must do this, right? Right? They can’t all be out there irresponsibly buying Wiis, right? Me and Dr. Boyfriend aren’t on unemployment, and we’re not buying big screen TVs and Wii’s. In fact, my birthday present from Dr. Boyfriend (Dec 1st – Happy Birthday to me) was him passing on to me one of his cherished WWII rifles. He gave me one of his M1 Garand rifles. Fiscally responsible, and the gesture is – goshdarnit – *sniffs* – teh win. I don’t have a problem per se with helping people out with unemployment so that they are not living on the street, but if our government is doling out enough cash in unemployment checks to individuals and couples such that they have enough left over to buy 1000-dollar entertainment systems, there’s something seriously wrong with the system. I will accept that our government will help you to not starve or freeze to death if you lose your job, but I have a huge problem with the money given to the unemployed and impovershid being used to buy big screen TVs. This is one instance where my libertarian leaning tendencies are benched; if you are on government assistance, living on money that comes from the pockets of this country’s taxpayers, I think big brother should be watching your every move, so that when you have enough left over money to buy a big screen TV on Uncle Sam’s tab, your unemployment benefits become reduced.

Dr. Boyfriend response is thus:

I assert that those two individuals are in fact more “fit,” in the “survival of
the fittest” sense of the word, than any of us. They are more adapted to their
enviornment in the sense that they, and scum like them, are far more likely to
reproduce than us. You and Karen are avowed DINKs, and Shoothouse Barbie and I are at
least a few years from being at the “having kids” point, mostly for financial
and career reasons. People like them are more likely to pass on their genes,
and more importantly their attitudes, than we are.

And why is that? Because you get more of what you subsidize. Only an elected
body could think up an idea as short-sighted as making NOT working more
profitable than working. Coupled with the fact that you actually are penalized
for working, and it’s not surprising we have to spend about half of the federal
budget on entitlement programs. The government has actually made acting
irresponsibly and stupidly a reproductive advantage.

You know when you have those moments when you realize just how much time has passed since, I don’t know, some event, perhaps, and it makes you feel old? Well, in grad school, we (well, I really should say *most of us* and *should* here) have these moments when we realize just how long we’ve been in grad school, and that we should probably try to finish up. It goes something like this:

I remember when I was a first-year, and figured I’d be tying up loose ends by the time I was a fourth-year, so that I could graduate in 5 years like a normal graduate student….Oh shit! That was four years ago! I should probably get on that whole “meaningful-research-dissertation-writing-defense-thingy”.

(PhD comics is pretty much spot on to the whole experience!)

I started this damn blogging thing at the end of my second year. I am a fourth-year now, and a senior graduate student in my lab. It’s weird having post-doctoral fellows come to me for advice about their experiments. Though we all have legitimate work to get done – at all stages of gradschool, I mean – my work is starting to feel a little more, well, legitimately frightening. In my second year, I had to give a divisional seminar, where I talked about my research project for 30 minutes in front of my division. I did fine, but I didn’t enjoy it. I had to have a good presentation, but it was, well, not really a great big deal. Every second-year student gives one of these talks, no matter how far they’ve progressed in their research. Now, I’m looking down the road at tfinishing a manuscript ASAP because I already have half of the data for my third paper and want to start writing that, a conference in January to prepare for, my fourth-year seminar to plan and give sometime in February, another trip to Brookhaven National Laboratory in late February/March, a second conference in April – which reminds me that I need to submit my abstract by November second, and then more Brookhaven National Laboratory work come end of summer-ish. Somewhere in there I need to fit in two weddings, the lab’s annual group trip to somewhere, and hopefully a week or two off for some fammy-time and r&r on Cape Cod because I haven’t been there with my fam in longass time, but of course that depends on whether I’ve gotten enough work done to take time off.

This was my “moment.” I realized it’s going to be quite hard to fit in the whole dissertation writing thing as it is. I also have given myself the goal of graduating before Thanksgiving 2010 (as opposed to shortly thereafter, which is my projected finishing-up time frame as it stands now) so that I can go have Thanksgiving with my fammy and not be insane. It doesn’t leave much time for futzing around on the intrawebz.

Folks, I’ve decided I’d rather graduate than blog, and because I have lousy writing skills and much writing to do, and also because I know my tendencies pretty well, this means, well, kinda choosing. My scant posting in recent months was due to doing a lot of work and not idling at my desk trying to come up with ways to occupy myself. I no longer have to try to come up with things to do; my plate overfloweth. I have more to do than I can handle alone, and my boss has seen fit to split my project into two offshoots (a good thing, meaning that I’ve established a solid enough, interesting-enough base that it can have branches) and give me a first-year minion to train. Which reminds me, I forgot to put that on my list.

So what comes next, after this gradschool thing, after this next year, you may wonder? Frankly I don’t know. I’ll be staying Austin until July 2011, because that’s when my lease runs out. But I’m expecting a high degree of chaos then as well, with the whole trying to find jobs for two PhD’s (Dr. Boyfriend and I) in one location, moving, settling in, you know, life.

I’ll try to keep up with range reports, and what have you. But blogging is getting bumped lower and lower on my priority list these day. The thing is, I’m almost too busy to miss it. I’m a much better scientist than a blogger. I don’t have a whole lot of original ideas that are blogworthy (or that I’m willing to share with the intrawebz. Like my plans to take over the world, for example. I don’t go public with that shit. Wait…f***! ). I’ve never claimed to. One of the reasons I started this blog was so that I could share the whole secret life aspect of science, ya know, because, we’re not just a bunch of white coats. I think I have a pretty interesting “secret life,” if you will. I’ve played symphonies, danced the Nutracker, had a career as a professional figure skater, shot in a pistol competition, worked as a zamboni driver, and learned some legit circus tricks. Thing is, right now, and for the next year, I’m gonna be mainly a white-coat donning lab monkey. My “free” time is mostly spent hanging out at home or otherwise enjoying the computer-free company of my dog and Dr. Boyfriend, and occassionally some other characters, you know, because it’s important to maintain at least some minimum degree of social behaviour.

So, thanks to all my readers, friends and frenemies, for making this really fun while it lasted. Wish me luck in the real world. I’ll try to update you with my status from time to time. Gun stuff, dog stuff, some other stuff perhaps, interesting science stuff maybe – I’ll probably do a blog cleanout soon, so if you want to take incriminating info about her evilness, moi, do it now I’d really like to post my next publications because I think it will be totally bitchin’, and that means essentially coming out of anonymity. I wish I could do both blogging and science to a likeable degree, but you’ll just have to believe me on this one: I can’t. Most of it has to do with my being a very, very slow writer. I’ve gotten somewhat better at writing, though not proofreading, and to put forth the kind of posting I’d really like to be able to do, it would mean devoting alot more time to it, a lot more research. And with the amount of time I need for researching and writing the stuff in my job description…well, I’m being redundant. You get the picture. Leave requests for posts (e.g. more showgirl chronicles…I know I haven’t been good about continuing that little series).

I’m not going galt, and I’m not going off the grid. I’m just, well, almost 30 and I need to finish my PhD. You can blame my boss for making me do real work and requiring that I go to conferences and national labs, train first-years, and publish research findings. Kidding. I actually want to do all these things, and I’m stoked that I get the chance to do them. I have to honor that!

Buh bye intrawebz (sort of), I’ll miss you! Check out my blogroll!

Xox

SB

(That’s me on the left. Better living through chemistry! By the way, I like to pronounce the “Ch” as one would in “cheetos”. Or with a good ol’ hebrew “ch,” like “chanuka” or “challa”.  Resisting maturity since 1981…)

Yesterday evening started off as a nice, romantic night in: good wine, some cheese, a movie about guns (Lord of War), and then it happened: our weimaraner decided to chase the stinky, funny-looking, black and white cat that had wandered into our yard. About halfway through the movie, we heard the clacking of the dog door and instantly smelled her skunkiness.

The kicker is that Elektra apparently did not learn her lesson the first time. The skunk apparently remained in our backyard, and, as Dr. Boyfriend went to the store to pick up some, uh, odor removing items, it got her a second time. Stupid dog…

We have de-skunkified the canine. Tomato juice, apparently, is not the way to go; it only works after like 5 baths in the stuff. Instead we looked up a nice home-made chemical bath recipe: hydrogen peroxide, baking soda,  and dish soap.  Elektra was not a happy girl, after being first sprayed with a skunk, then with enzymatic cleaner, then with what is essentially RCA cleaner. But she no longer smells.

We are still in the process of de-contaminating our house.

This morning, I made an appointment to get my neck/back chiropractored on Wednesday. Wednesday was the earliest day they could see me, I would’ve liked to get in sooner. See, I didn’t exactly sleep last night. I nabbed a few 20 minute naps in between contorting in pain and unsuccesfully trying to cry myself to sleep. Twice. Dr. Boyfriend woke up and massaged my poor broken body and held me while I wallowed in pain, misery, tiredness and self-pity at 3 AM.

This will be my 4th trip to the chiropractor since joining the Synchrotron experimenters one and a half weeks ago.

Got an appointment to see my GP tomorrow. Hopefully he’ll give me a prescription for muscle relaxers, so that I may sleep better – or at all. This will be very important when it comes time to run the beamline on the synchrotron, since we operate 24/7 in 12 hour shifts. Tried to get an appointent at university health services but they were all filled up with sickly undergrads. The wait at urgent care was 4-5 hours, and, though they offered to put me in the queue, they heavily recommended taking a butload of NSAIDs instead. Their exact words were “if you choose to wait, you’ll probably get H1N1.” I said “no thank you,” and left. Besides swine flu, the thought of sitting for 4 hours made me want to committ supuku.

And I’m back in lab. Much of the right side of my body from my upper neck down to my hip is numb from the irritation and swelling caused by the incessant muscle spasms. It’s kinda like a temporary relief, as long as I don’t try to move too much. Like turn my head more than 20 degrees.

*sneers at potentiostat*

Damn that instrument. Actually, to be technical, it’s not the potentiostat itself that works me over for the worse, its the custom electrochemical devices with their finicky alignment, brittle leads, and tiny screws, and having to set them up in the goddamn hood. I hate those things. Not to mention, stuff doesn’t work as nicely as it does in my regular glass cell, despite their fancy-cool custom machined-ness. Seriously, I get the best results in a 20-cent glass vial using three electrodes which I have expertly bundled together with parafin wax. Science….

Apart from the searing pain, working on the weekend isn’t all that bad. By the second consecutive weekend in lab, working 7 days a week feels totally normal. Plus, I work a slighter schedule: usually only about 6 hours, compared to the 10-12 hours on weekdays.

I’m currently synthesizing my back-up samples, it’s getting down to the wire. On a side note, tetrachloroplatinate is a pretty, pretty platinum salt. A 0.1M  aqueous solution is a deep sunset orange.

After the boss shoehorned me into the upcoming Brookhaven excursion at the last minute, I broke out my calendar to roughly plot out all of what I need to do to prepare my samples in the next 2 and a half weeks. Working backwards from the date we fly out of Austin, I determined that the latest possible date to begin my “contingency plan,” (in other words, should my synthesis or sample prep for the trip become so utterly fucksored that it leaves me no choice but to remake samples) is Wednesday.

At this point, I need to work straight through the next two weekends. I don’t know what I’ll do if I hit a snag….

Wish me sanity. See you when I get back on October 22.

**(In)sanity update**

Got into lab this morning and hadn’t even dropped my gear off in the office before Susie, one of my co-workers who’s been working on the beamline at Brookhaven for the past 2 years, grabbed me to chat about preparations for the upcoming trip. Apparently, we’re not just doing preliminary runs on a handful of my samples, but most of our time is going to be devoted to my project. It seems that the boss, in a meeting with Susie last week, got excited about the prospects of this little project of mine and came up with a slew of stuff he wants done in-situ. Damn, sure would’ve been nice to be aware-ified of this at the time. Oh, and something screw-tastic happened with communication lines between bossman and the folks who fill our grant at NSLS. The boss thought we had until February 1, 2010, to submit our proposal for more beamline funding. Wrongo. Apparently, that shit is due on Wednesday; we have two days to write a grant proposal.

I’m starting to lose my shpadoinkle.

Whiskey, please. STAT!

**UPDATE number two**

We got the grant proposal submitted 28 minutes before the deadline. Whew! Now back to my regularly scheduled insanity.

- I’m really enjoying the cool fall weather. Sign me up for more of this cold rainy buisness; I like wearing a sweater and sipping cocoa while waiting for the morning bus.

- After 5 days spent waiting on the synthesis of my stupid nanoparticles, I finally get to do science today. Yes, synthesizing nanothings is also technically “doing” science, but it’s like watching paint dry. Or waiting for water to boil – very slowly. The damn things just stir in their vials. It’s the advanced monkey work part of my job, as I like to call it; the part that a highly trained primate could do. Synthesis is kinda also like cooking. There are recipes. The recipe for my nanoparticles is something like this: mix 2 parts dendritic polymer to every 147 parts platinum tetrachlorate (which is a verrrrrry pretty sunset orange color) in water and let stir for 72 hours. Add 10-fold ratio of reducing agent-to-platinum ion, seal tightly and let stir for additional 24 hours. Place solutions is cellulose sack, seal off, and dialyze for additional 24 hours. Remove from cellulose sack at exactly 24 hours (this is the part I f***ed up last time) and store in glass vial.

- My PChem student is doing very well, with one exception: she forgot to turn in her homework which she had halfway completed. Her PChem courseload is very similar to mine, judging from her homework assignments, that is, it is work intensive. The homework is essentially where PChem is ingrained in the students’ heads, not in the actual classroom, reason being that the teachers flat-out don’t have time to explain very much. It’s up to the students to jump onto the playing field and learn how to play the game. SO far, my student has done well. She’s learning how to play the quantum mechanics game quite well. She can now visualize integral calculus and intuit expectation values without calculating them. Back to the homework issue: the PChem homework for a good solid pchem class should take students between 10-20 hours per week to complete. I know for a fact that she did about half of it, because I worked on initial steps with her, and later checked her final answers. I was priding myself on how well she was doing, on the fact that I had complete confidence in her ability to play the quantum game, having already walked her through initial steps.

Then I found out she screwed the pooch. She wasn’t able to finish putting the work in on the homework because she has another ugly upper level class, advanced organic chem. Why, I asked her, didn’t you hand in what you already had? You put in at least 7-8 hours on that! Apparently, she felt guilty for not finishing it, and too ashamed to turn in unfinished work. So, because you didn’t want the professor to think you’re slacking off, you decided not to hand in anything rather than get about half the credit for the problems you already did, which you worked hard on and were correct? You ridiculous creature! Folks, this girl is me approximately 5 years ago. I used to screw myself over like this all the time. If I was late to class or lab, I simply wouldn’t go that day. I felt dreadfully embarrassed and disrespectful walking into a lecture that had already started, so I would skip, rather than show up in the middle of class. Idiotic reasoning, right?! Of course, I set her straight, and told her she’d better not pull that kind of crap again. I think she got the point. I had a mind to email her professor and vouch for her having worked halfway through the set prior to the deadline, and then tell her to tuck her tail and ask to hand in her assignment late for partial credit, but I resisted. That would be meddlesome.

**UPDATE**

Now with more pressure!

- Just found out I’ll be going to Brookhaven National Lab to do EXAFS  (extended x-ray absorption fine-structure spectroscopy) at the the National Synchrotron Light Sourse (NSLS) for a week…3 weeks from now. I’ve been up in my boss’s grill about doing EXAFS because I do love the quantummy goodness of the technique, and I also love me some reubans from those NY delicatessens, soooo I win! I’m officially on team EXAFS. It’s kinda a big deal because of the scarcity of beamline time; EXAFS beamlines require supercoliders, so there aren’t a whole lot of them available. This, of course, means my work day will become about 4 hours longer and this will probably be my last weekend off for the next month. So, I got what I asked for, but will I like it? All work and no play usually makes barbie a surly girl. On the upshot, if everything works out, I’ll probably have more than half of the data for my dissertation. No pain, no gain, right?

IBD recently polled over 1,300 practicing physicians about their positions on the government’s ideas regarding the healthcare overhaul. The results are pretty clear:

I fully anticipate the response from liberals to be along the lines of “those doctors who would consider quitting are evidently greedy capitalists, are clearly uninformed and this poll is clearly a work of Satan because it was conducted by Inverstors Buisness Daily,” or something of similar intellectual arrogance.

(By the way, IBD commissioned a list of doctors from a list broker. The names of the doctors to whom the polls were mailed were chosen at random. Over 1,300 samples is also a pretty good sample size; Rasmussen polls typically have a sample range of about 1,000.)

Forty-five percent of doctors would consider quitting. I don’t know which statistic is more striking, that nearly half of our doctors would consider no longer practicing medicine, or that two thirds of doctors don’t believe the government can cover 47 million more people at a lower cost and a higher quality of care. Considering that these guys are in fact the front line of medicine, I’m inclined to believe that brushing off their positions on the reforms we seek to undertake would be, bluntly, fucking stupid.

IBD also provided articles detailing the opinions of doctors both for and opposed to reforms. I can’t say either side is significantly more or less in the know than the other. The comments from the doctors who opposed reforms were definately diluted with a lot of anger and empty clammoring about how unamerican socialized medicine is. But some of the doctors polled discussed their experiences working in the healthcare systems of Great Brittain and Canada, and felt that the government’s hand in healthcare made the working conditions (which are already quite stressful for GPs) pretty damn tough.

On the pro-reforms side, many of the doctors embraced the ideology that medicine needs to be extended as a right, not a privelige, not only for moral and ethical reasons, but also because we’re all in the same boat, and we’ll get sick together. However, I was a little doubtful about how well informed the doctors are about the our population and our relative healthcare needs and the availability of such care. One doctor opined that the poorest half of the population gets poor healthcare. I am in the poorest half of the population, and I happen to have fantastic healthcare (BCBX of Texas, and my particular plan is a NFP provider too!). Of course, I’m in my mid-twenties and in fairly good health, and this is not so for everyone.

Regardless of our doctors’ positions on politics and the role of government in medicine(which, if you ask me, doesn’t make a rat’s ass of a difference; if you’re having surgery, what do you care about more: your doctor’s skills as a surgeon, or their political views?) these are our doctors, and we need them to stick around. The bottom line is: whether or not they are greedy capitalist pigs doesn’t matter; good luck getting your higher quality, less expensive medical care when there’s a shortage of doctors.

According to the Chamber of Commerce, the average cost of health insurance for an individual is $7,200 per year. Baucus wants to tax what he calls “Cadillac” health insurance plans: plans over $8,000 for an individual, or $21,000 for a family, because these expensive plans are only “enjoyed” by a limitted minority of citizens.

I looked up my health benefits. I get the bare minimum plan, but if I added vision (which I need to do because I have a small astigmatism and it’s getting worse), and dental – reasonable additions I think, for people with astigmatisms and teeth, my plan would be nearly $8,000. If I were to add chiropractic and increase my coverage for PT – which I want to do because I’ve maxed out the PT benefits in years prior because my back requires nearly constant rehabilitation – I’d be over that $8,000 limit.

Folks, my net annual income is $23,000. I am not in the “wealthy minority of citizens” subset. I am barely middle class. I shouldn’t be taxed on my benefits so that I can “enjoy” having my cervical spine popped back into place so that I may be able to turn my head more than 45 degrees. IMO, the health benefits I want do not surmount to a Cadillac plan. In the minds of many Dems, however, they do. They seem to think that I would be having excessive benefits, the proverbial Cadillac, if you will, when all I need is a car. So, at my pithy income,I pay out of pocket for the luxory of chiropractic and PT. To give you an idea of what this would amount to per year, I’ve paid out of pocket expenses of about $500 for chiropractic and $1,000 for physical rehabilitation since May.

I’m so fucking sick of hearing about how inhumane I am for not having a rosy attitude towards having to pay more money to the government so that I can have my “Cadillac.”

*grumbles*

Via MSNBC

WASHINGTON – The uproar over Rep. Joe Wilson’s shouting “you lie” at President Barack Obama returns to the House floor Tuesday for what could be a contentious and highly partisan debate over whether to formally criticize the South Carolina Republican.

The decision by Democratic leaders to bring a resolution of disapproval to the House floor was derided by Republicans, who said Wilson had already apologized for his remark during Obama’s health care speech to a joint session of Congress last week.

But it was also met with skepticism by a senior Democrat, House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, D-Mass., who said he would vote against it. “I think it’s bad precedent to put us in charge of deciding whether people act like jerks. I don’t have time to monitor everyone’s civility.”

Wilson apologized to the White House for his outburst, and Obama said he had accepted the apology. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi initially said she was not inclined to take the matter further, saying it was time to move on to the more pressing matter of health care.

But other Democratic leaders, including Wilson’s fellow South Carolinian James Clyburn, said the egregious breach of decorum could not be ignored. Wilson in turn rejected suggestions that he go to the House floor on his own and apologize.

Clyburn, in an interview last week, said Wilson’s outburst was “indicative of the combativeness he displays all the time when it comes to politics.”

Clyburn, a leading member of the Congressional Black Caucus, perceived it as a snub that Wilson held a town hall meeting on health care this summer at a school in Clyburn’s district — where Clyburn’s children attended — without telling Clyburn.

House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio sided with Wilson and said he would vote against the resolution.

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele issue a statement accusing Democrats of “another stunning example of hypocrisy.” He said Democrats “are wasting taxpayers’ time and resources on a legislative measure to censure Congressman Joe Wilson so they don’t have to talk about their exceedingly unpopular health care plan.”

Ok, so basically, because Wilson, who had ISSUED A PUBLIC APOLOGY WHICH WAS ACCEPTED BY THE PRESIDENT, refused to do so again on the house floor, the house Dems feel it is pertinent to divert their energies away from the constructing and fine-tuning (which they *ought* to be focussing on in order to win support for) their proposed health care reforms and officially slap him on the bottom for being a naughty boy.

Fanfuckingtastic, really. Not only are they spending less time working on healthcare reform, but they’re going to tick off voters by beating a dead horse, and are also sure to deter the progress of the bill by virtue that more people – voters and congressmen alike – will heighten their wariness over the increasingly apparent underlying political powerplay agenda that goes with those reforms.

These Dems really ought to heed the example of Barney Frank and Pelosi, who have more or less said it is in their best interest to move on. It’s too bad for them that Obama has busied himself with jumping on the “Kanye West is a gigantic tool” bandwagon, when what he really should do (and most ricky-tick) is tell the house Dems to drop the Wilson issue before they torpedo themselves with a size 10 enema (ok, that was a low blow but I couldn’t resist. If Obama does warn the house Dems against furthering this congressional pissing contest, I’ll duly update this post). Bringing about a concressional resolution of disapproval against Wilson is such an unnecessary and poorly thought out political move on their part that I almost hope they go through with it. I could use a good chortle.