25 responses to
“Two for the road.”

1. moe99 said on May 19th, 2008 at 3:15 am

   Just sent you a note, Nancy. Guess where Was(Not Was) ended their tour this spring? That’s right, Seat­tle!!! And guess who only fig­ured it out last night and drove like a ban­shee to Bal­lard to the Trac­tor Tav­ern to see them after book club? And in a won­der­ful bit of karma, the guy ahead of me in line had an extra ticket, so it was absolutely worth the price of admis­sion, even though I only got the sec­ond set! They were fab­u­lous! Thank you for turn­ing me on to them. Haven’t danced that much in a cou­ple of years. Next time, I’m bring­ing my posse.

2. Linda said on May 19th, 2008 at 7:55 am

   Nancy, it’s not just Beat­rice. It’s all the royal women. Remem­ber that weird thing Camilla had on her head when she mar­ried Prince Charles?
   And check out Autumn Kelly, the new wife of Peter Phillips, grand­son of the king.
   It’s like some mad gar­dener got ahold of them.

3. alex said on May 19th, 2008 at 8:19 am

   Well, George McGov­ern was a blue Amer­ica hic­cup, although from what my par­ents tell me he didn’t have any cross-over appeal and the Dems were idiots to run him just like the Repub­li­cans were idiots to run Gold­wa­ter in 1964.

   It’ll be inter­est­ing to see how the cam­paign plays out. One thing’s for sure. Obama’s set­ting a new prece­dent by tak­ing money only from cit­i­zens for this cam­paign. If he wins, it may well become the stan­dard by which all future pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates are judged. He will have accom­plished cam­paign finance reform with­out ever hav­ing to draft legislation.

   Wouldn’t it be great to have debate ana­lysts telling us whose answers are tainted by which lobbyists?

4. Emma said on May 19th, 2008 at 8:24 am

   I like these hats. Are they absurd .…. or surd?

5. MichaelG said on May 19th, 2008 at 8:47 am

   How do you say “Nice hat” when try­ing to sti­fle a guffaw?

6. Jolene said on May 19th, 2008 at 8:50 am

   I actu­ally kimd of like that hat too. I can’t quite imag­ine wear­ing such a thing, but the but­ter­flies are great.

7. del said on May 19th, 2008 at 9:04 am

   Love the hats. But they must be worn with atti­tude and con­fi­dence. Think proud peacock.

8. brian stouder said on May 19th, 2008 at 9:07 am

   What Alex said.

   If I was going to do a michaelj/caliban stream-of-conciousness style polemic, the start­ing point would be how great it was to actu­ally see and inter­act with the Obama fam­ily, and way­points would include how the rest of the crowd almost lit­er­ally lit up in their pres­ence, and how there is no shame in actu­ally being excited by the prospects of a new admin­is­tra­tion with a dif­fer­ent agenda, headed by a per­son no older than many of us, who there­fore came of age in the same Amer­ica as we did (even account­ing for his unique per­spec­tive, as a mixed-race son of a world-travelling mom, who lands in Kansas, raised by Aun­tie Em — or grandma).…and end­ing with the dec­la­ra­tion that — damn it anyway! — I will NOT feel guilty for enthu­si­as­ti­cally sup­port­ing this can­di­date, nor should any­one else.

9. john c said on May 19th, 2008 at 10:31 am

   My 9-year-old wears an Obama but­ton on his back-pack. He hasn’t reported any issues. Grosse Pointe is gen­er­ally Repub­li­can, though “The Park,” where I live, went for Kerry and Gore.
   I was 10 in 1972 and my par­ents were huge McGov­ern fans. They had a big elec­tion night party and I remem­ber feel­ing the excite­ment and then going to bed. I was SHOCKED when I woke up and they told me he had lost. How could he lose? Every­one we know voted for him?
   My uno­rig­i­nal take on McGov­ern is that he was a good man, but the party lurched so far to the left after ’68 that they alien­ated most of their foot sol­diers. Old man Daley may have been a prickly sort. But when it came to elec­tions, he knew how to — what’s the word I’m look­ing for here? — win.
   Most of the peo­ple Obama alien­ates wouldn’t vote for him any­way. I’m ner­vous, but hopeful.

10. Dorothy said on May 19th, 2008 at 10:36 am

    I’m sorry but I’m just not see­ing the but­ter­fly hat as neato. It looks like poor Bea is being attacked by rabid but­ter­flies high on crack. Why in heaven’s name isn’t her head list­ing towards that side?!

    Camilla’s cha­peaux looks like her blow dryer went wonky and ruined her hairdo. I’m ever so glad I wasn’t born royal!

11. LAMary said on May 19th, 2008 at 10:52 am

    Autumn Kelly looks like she needs to wash her hair.

    Is it Philip Treacy who’s design­ing these hats? He’s done some really crazy ones of ships and things I think.

12. LAMary said on May 19th, 2008 at 10:55 am

    Ah! I was able to do an end run around my employer’s cyber bar­ri­ers to your links and it is Philip Treacy. Really, find some pho­toes of his big hats. They may SJP’s look tame.

13. LAMary said on May 19th, 2008 at 10:55 am

    LAMary says:

    May 19th, 2008 at 10:55 am Edit this com­ment (30 min­utes left)
    Ah! I was able to do an end run around my employer’s cyber bar­ri­ers to your links and it is Philip Treacy. Really, find some pho­tos of his big hats. They may SJP’s look tame.

14. Sue said on May 19th, 2008 at 10:56 am

    The but­ter­fly hat looks pho­to­shopped, doesn’t it? Any­way, it appears that the Roy­als haven’t learned any­thing from Great-Great-Grandmamma Queen Victoria’s day — she used to pile on the rings to hide her ugly hands and instead called more atten­tion to them. Yes I’m being catty but geez. Talk about upstag­ing the bride.
    Brian, I want to be enthu­si­as­tic about Obama, and even about Hilary, but I’m hon­estly scared for both of them. It is the real “thing that no one will talk about”. The pos­i­tive inten­sity of emo­tion you feel is equaled and exceeded on the neg­a­tive side. I assume and hope it is being cov­ered care­fully by the Secret Service.

15. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on May 19th, 2008 at 11:04 am

    I was raised and am still liv­ing in the broad sash across the Kleagle’s hooded robes of the 1920’s era Klan (read — Indi­ana, Ohio, West Virginia).

    What you hear is “ah jes’ cain’t vote for the col­ored fel­low, but he seems like a nice guy, just don’t want him the boss of me. Bill’s wife’s alright, ah guess, but …”

    The rabid haters? There just aren’t as many of them as there were thirty years ago. I’m not say­ing we don’t have a long way to go, but you have to roll up with a CNN cam­era to get the Fred Phelps and David Duke con­tin­gent to froth much. And the kind of peo­ple who’d have had a kind word for those two a decade or more back, they are dis­mis­sive and unin­ter­ested in that kind of stuff.

    I’m not say­ing Obama’s secu­rity detail can take the week off, just that where i would have expected to hear angry mut­ter­ings i’m see­ing gen­eral shrugs, and maybe a “waaal, ah’m not votin’ fer him, but he might not be so bad after all. Guessin’ we’ll see soon enough.”

16. brian stouder said on May 19th, 2008 at 11:08 am

    Sue — def­i­nitely agree about the “thing that no one will talk about”.

    In casual con­ver­sa­tions this pops up every so often (as a ‘Joke”, don’t you know) — and my approach is to take it seri­ously and say — “always bet on the good guys” (mean­ing those Ben Affleck-looking, swivel-headed secu­rity guys)…and at least once the answer back I got was that “the good guys” might pose the threat!

    More gen­er­ally, death is always in the wings (it pro­vides the urgency in the “fierce urgency of now”), no less so for McCain — even if the assump­tion (in his case) is that his clock will sim­ply run out.

    I say — win or lose — we can­not suc­cumb to the murm­ers and whis­pers; and, always bet on the good guys

17. Sue said on May 19th, 2008 at 11:17 am

    Thank you Brian; I think I will take your last sen­tence to heart.

18. Connie said on May 19th, 2008 at 11:18 am

    Plenty of rabid haters here in Elkhart. We even had a cross burn­ing on the lawn of an inter­ra­cial a cou­ple of weeks ago. The dis­cus­sion forums on the Truth web site (our local news­pa­per for what it’s worth), http://​etruth​.com, are filled with hor­ri­ble racism aimed both at African-Americans and His­pan­ics, who, accord­ing to the posters, are all illegals.

19. Beryl Ament said on May 19th, 2008 at 12:46 pm

    I’m so glad those but­ter­flies hatched. They were still in their cocoon at Christ­mas (photo 5).

20. Catherine said on May 19th, 2008 at 12:53 pm

    I adore Sarah Fer­gu­son and her daugh­ters… but did Bea think to ask any­one else, “What are you wear­ing to the wed­ding?” She really sticks out in the group pix, not in a good way. As Miley Cyrus will tes­tify, it can suck to do your grow­ing up in the spotlight.

21. Catherine said on May 19th, 2008 at 12:59 pm

    Slowly, sadly and stub­bornly I’m real­iz­ing that Hillary prob­a­bly isn’t going to make it. In any other year, I’d be on that Obama band­wagon — His cam­paign really does seem to rep­re­sent a fresh, more sin­cere, hon­est and hope­ful alter­na­tive to the tra­di­tional spin-centered cam­paign. My con­cern is what hap­pens if/when the pedestal he’s on is rocked or top­pled by scan­dal. It’s a really long way to fall. As Jeff said, though, I’m try­ing to dig down deep in my dream duf­fle (dude).

22. del said on May 19th, 2008 at 6:58 pm

    I’m with JohnC about Obama — ner­vous but hopeful.

23. Terry WAlter said on May 20th, 2008 at 6:02 am

    I’m ner­vous but hope­ful about Obama;nervous that he’ll win. To believe that a prod­uct of the Cook county polit­i­cal machine is a paragon of virtue is truly a gar­gan­tuan leap of faith. He’s just a used car sales­man in a dif­fer­ent suit. Isn’t that his buddy they are now try­ing to decide whether or not to hang? And the utter arro­gance to call McCain naive on for­eign pol­icy. McCain spent years in the Hanoi Hilton and decades in the Sen­ate. He was a near lone voice in the wilder­ness call­ing for the troop surge,which by any objec­tive stan­dards has tilted the bat­tle back in our favor. Obama-up until a cou­ple of years ago, for­eign pol­icy to him meant out­side Cook county.
    Here’s a cou­ple of nuggets for you mo’ bet­ter gov­ern­ment types. The recently retired,Ivy league edu­cated mayor of Ft. Wayne Gra­ham Richard, awarded a 3 year $285,000 con­tract to his “High Per­for­mance Gov­ern­ment Corp.” a non­profit gov­ern­ment effi­ciency group he helped cre­ate just months before he left office. This contract,just coin­ci­den­tally I’m sure, was just under the $100,000 per year that would require coun­cil approval. The first pay­ment came just before the end of 2007 (and his term), for which NO ser­vices were per­formed. Now THAT’S effi­ciency.
    And in Nan­cys’ beloved Ohio, remem­ber the Big Tobacco set­tle­ment money that was extorted years ago? $270 mil­lion.
    It was sup­posed to go toward edu­cat­ing peo­ple to not smoke. Well, let’em hack them­selves to death. The state leg­is­la­ture has bet­ter things to do with $230 mil­lion of it. They’ll spend it how­ever they damn well please.
    So while you are all load­ing up your rock sacks, remem­ber the words of the immor­tal Jack Webb; just the facts,ma’am.

24. brian stouder said on May 20th, 2008 at 8:29 am

    the words of the immor­tal Jack Webb; just the facts,ma’am

    Well, we’ll skip the pro­tracted back-and-forth, and answer just this one nonfact -

    He [McCain] was a near lone voice in the wilder­ness call­ing for the troop surge,which by any objec­tive stan­dards has tilted the bat­tle back in our favor.

    Other than, say, Gen­eral Eric Shin­seki, who said as much BEFORE the war? (a real career-ender THAT was, with the all-knowing for­mer base­ball team owner GW Bush! Hell, a used car sales­man [as you say Obama is] at least has to make good deci­sions every day, unlike the social­ized elite ranks of MLB ownership!)

    Or John Kerry, who ran on the premise (amongst oth­ers) that Bush didn’t have enough troops in Iraq, in 2004?

25. Terry WAlter said on May 20th, 2008 at 12:28 pm

    I would agree that the con­duct of the war was poorly han­dled between the top­pling and the surge, thus the need for the surge. There were even com­plaints dur­ing the inva­sion that they were short­handed. I (guess­ing) sus­pect that Rums­feld was a major player in this, part of the cor­po­rate lean & mean men­tal­ity. It sounds great, if you aren’t the one bak­ing in the heat,without sleep, dodg­ing bul­lets. This shows the weak­ness of the busi­ness­man as great gov­ern­ment sav­ior (see also Mitch Daniels). Wish there were more good answers out there. I just see Obama as old liberalism/socialism;which I know is pop­u­lar with many on here, dressed in a new suit.