TuttleTree.com

Dear Fox, ABC, NBC, CNN, and every other news network,

American Idol is not news. You act like it's some big event every time someone gets voted off, let alone when someone wins the freaking show. (Pardon my french.)

There are plenty of other not-news-worthy things you could cover that I would forgive, like how things are going for Octo-Mom. But seriously. Think about it. It's a TV Gaaaaaame Shoooooow. You don't talk about Ken Jennings any more, but the man is a freaking genius. Sanjaya made it through another week? What an injustice! Surely everyone, everywhere needs to watch a couple of teleprompter-reading news puppets hash it out.

This is the paragraph where I might normally remind you we're fighting two unwinnable wars and our economy is circling the drain faster than a cat can lick its own butt with its tail up and its tongue out… but I think we're past that now, right?

Leave it to TMZ, ok? Because every now and then I might care about American Idol, and they have the intelligence to weed out the stupid stories you spend 10 minutes on (because nobody cares!), and just show the same 30 seconds of drunk Paula Abdul making a fool out of herself on loop for 3 minutes. They get us. Also, it's their job to play trash-tv. Theirs requires them to have low standards. Yours, by contrast, requires some amount of journalistic integrity.

(Sorry to quote Wikipedia, but they made me do it!)

One of the leading voices in the U.S. on the subject of Journalistic Standards and Ethics is the Society of Professional Journalists. The Preamble to its Code of Ethics states:

…public enlightenment is the forerunner of justice and the foundation of democracy. The duty of the journalist is to further those ends by seeking truth and providing a fair and comprehensive account of events and issues. Conscientious journalists from all media and specialties strive to serve the public with thoroughness and honesty. Professional integrity is the cornerstone of a journalist's credibility.

None of this is to slight American Idol itself, or people who watch it. We choose not to watch it, but we respect that it's your choice whether or not you'll watch it just the same. Still, you have to agree it's a bit ridiculous to cover it on the news…

Pardon me while I deviate from our regularly scheduled cooing.

Love him or hate him, Barack Obama is the President of the United States.

Did you know that he does a weekly address — just a quick few minutes — published every week on Saturday, easily accessible on YouTube? It's true, and it's right here.

In addition to staying familiar with what the President wants us to be thinking about, I also like to give some attention to what we — the electorate — want him to be thinking about. I've found a great tool to keep track of that, too. It's called the Obameter.

It lists all of the promises he made during his campaign, and assigns each one a status of Kept, Compromised, Broken, Stalled, In The Works, or No Action. At the time of writing, the count is: 16 Kept, 5 Compromised, 2 Broken, 1 Stalled, 21 In The Works, and 465 No Action. Not a bad record, considering he's been in office just over a month. Clearly a man of action!

In addition to giving each issue a status, they write their own sort of news stories about actions taken, so you can see exactly why the status is what it is. And as time passes, each active issue gets more coverage. As far as I can tell, it's an un-biased, non-partisan commentary.

And hey, if you hate the guy, at least this will give you ammo come next election season, right?

Time for some photo fun.

Dylan is really starting to roll around. Case in point: More than once now, we've put him down for a nap like this (left) and when we go to get him up, he's laying this way (right).

I seem to remember my mom telling stories about checking on me at various points during the night and I would turn all the way around over the course of a night… sort of like a clock. I think we know where he gets this…

Last week, we went over to Susan and Ed's house to take pictures of the cousins together. One of my favorites from the afternoon is this one with all the kids in their bare feet. I wish I could clone or crop out the cable from the left side of the image, but it's still one of my favorites. It was a lot of fun. More here.

Of course, there have been plenty of family visits:

Here's another picture with Gramma that I'm particularly fond of — it cracks me up! — and a bunch more with family here…

And of course we have lots of pictures of us with Dylan… You've got to love the hooded towels. These things are awesome.