Budget shmudget. My Quarter Pounder is getting cold.

At the risk of committing the cardinal sin of blogic redundancy, I'm beginning this piece using the same scenario as my previous entry. 

As I drove my teenager to school Friday morning, we pulled up next to a white Toyota Camry, with a dark blue hood.

"Hey, that's Eric." My daughter's eyes transformed from the usual glazy randomness to a more sharpish focus.

"Did he get into an accident?" I asked. "Looks like he had to get a new hood."

"No, he painted it blue one purpose, so he'll always be able to find it."

I had to take a moment to not blurt out the first three thoughts that sprang into my brain:

1) A blue hood would've come in really handy in finding my friend's car after seeing Kansas and Styx at the Coliseum in '79.

2) Is Eric planning on moving to Los Autos del Blanc, or "Land of White Cars," after graduation?

3) What a freakin' ridiculous thing to do.

I verbalized none of these thoughts as we continued the additional six blocks to the school, where hordes of adolescents slowly shuffled into the building. I mumbled a silent prayer of thanks to the childcare gods, grateful that the impending government shutdown would not affect school teachers and hence, unleash these idle masses of hood painters onto our daytime society.

As we all know, the Congressional pillow fight ended just before midnight, when Mom must have come into the rec room and told everyone to settle down, clean up the chip crumbs, and get into their sleeping bags.

Crisis averted. Barely.

This never had to happen. A federal budget totaling $3.7 trillion whittled itself down to an ideological urinating contest over women's health. Once again, that evil lightning rod, otherwise known as Planned Parenthood, prohibited Congress's right wing faction from exercising the will of the majority of Americans.

Or so I'd like to believe. Throughout this skirmish, I had to wonder if the majority of us really cared that much about a seemingly abstract budget debate. Public outrage wasn't all that apparent, especially compared to what might happen if the Fox Network abruptly announced, "American Idol has been cancelled for the foreseeable future, due to a Havarti dispute regarding Mr. Tyler's dressing room deli platter."

Rioting, looting and disastrous ratings.

Or what if French Fries were declared illegal due to health concerns and their sales halted throughout our nation.

Citizens would take to the streets with signs and bullhorns, screaming their discontent. They'd become a little winded, sit down and loudly voice their vapid displeasure from collapsible camping chairs. Then they'd Thank God Funyuns and pork rinds have yet to feel the scythe of government overreach.

What if our military personnel were told to keep throwing their bodies on IEDs and we'd settle up their wages in three weeks or so, while their wives, husbands and children on the home front scramble paycheck-to-paycheck to make ends meet?

Hang on a second. That almost did happen.

Perhaps if this fiasco had lasted much longer, more of us would have felt the impact of a government operating on fumes, but I'm not so sure.

Gotta go. The Kardashians are on.

It's great to be a white guy.

I have no idea why, but every year I watch the Academy Awards.

And every year, I turn off the TV, mildly entertained, yet wondering how I again could have spent three hours watching Hollywood's aristocracy fawning over each other. They marvel at one another's important contributions to American culture; their orations are often worthy of Emmies for best Oscar performance.

This year, my disdain for the show's planners dialed up to an eleven, but not until the closing moments. Fifth graders from Staten Island's PS-22 chorus brought down the house with a fantastic rendition of "Over the Rainbow." That part was really cool.

But just as the song reached its finale, the kids scooted to the front of the stage and squatted down as a curtain rose behind them, revealing all the evening's Oscar champions. The contrast was profound, as the predominantly brown-skinned, T-shirt clad eleven-year-olds knelt reverently while the overwhelmingly Caucasian award winners, bedecked in millions of dollars worth of evening wear and jewelry, towered above the tots.

I'm sure the event's organizers juxtaposed these disparate groups to show that yes, dreams can come true. But at that moment, one glaring fact dominated my thoughts: those kids from Staten Island, especially the non-white variety, are faced with a far higher rainbow to vault than the cronies and fat cats behind them did.

Maybe I'm a little sensitive to our disadvantaged youth since learning about what our Republican-controlled House of Representatives has been up to of late. On February 18, led by Representative Chris Smith, R-New Jersey (that's him, above), the House passed a measure to end Federal Funding for Planned Parenthood.

That's three-hundred and thirty million dollars a year.

You may have heard conflicting information from your favorite right wing pundit, but make no mistake. Planned Parenthood has been prohibited from using federal monies for abortion for over thirty years. Nope, these funds are used for ninety percent of what PP does: preventive, primary care, which helps prevent unintended pregnancies through contraception, reduce the spread of sexually transmitted infections through testing and treatment, and screen for cervical and other cancers. How despicable, indeed.

Over 1.2 million youths and adults participate in Planned Parenthood educational programs every year.

One in five American women has chosen Planned Parenthood for health care at least once in her life, which piqued my curiosity. I wondered how many women serve in the United States House of Representatives, and the answer is:

Out of a total 433 members, sixty-seven, or fifteen percent, are women.

Makes you wonder, doesn't it? Clearly, a savings of  $335 million from the coffers of Planned Parenthood won't amount to a ding in the budget bucket. Then why? Why do these men care so much?

That's the point. They don't.