42 responses to
“A deep cleansing breath.”

1. alex said on September 1st, 2008 at 9:17 am

   Sorry so late to the party.

   So the McCain ticket isn’t going down in a ball of flames after all. With a Guns & God veep choice, it can pre­tend to go down in a blaze of glory.

   I’d bet any­thing that Rom­ney, Hutchin­son and the oth­ers took a pass.

2. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on September 1st, 2008 at 10:24 am

   For Labor Day relax­ation — slices of Bet­ter Boy tomato out of the gar­den, shred­ded ched­dar on top, sprin­kle rose­mary and thyme (from same gar­den), put under broiler just long enough (i have no idea how long that is, it’s a look thing).

   I’d grill, but there’s been too much red meat thrown our way the last few days … time for some vegan love.

3. basset said on September 1st, 2008 at 11:08 am

   Same for us, maybe a lit­tle home­grown basil chopped up and thrown on there too… mostly Bradley toma­toes here, though.

4. moe99 said on September 1st, 2008 at 11:11 am

   btw, the Repub­li­cans at the con­ven­tion in St. Paul may not have donned hair­shirts and sack­cloth and ashes in sol­i­dar­ity with NOLA:

   http://​abc​news​.go​.com/​B​l​o​t​t​e​r​/​C​o​n​v​e​n​t​i​o​n​s​/​s​t​o​r​y​?​i​d​=​5​6​9​9​1​2​3​&​a​m​p​;​page=1

5. coozledad said on September 1st, 2008 at 12:49 pm

   Just for a minute, imag­ine what they’d have said about Chelsea, or what they’d say about a hypo­thet­i­cal teenage daugh­ter of Obama.
   I will only say this: Mr Palin needs to shave that pornobilly beard immediately.

6. moe99 said on September 1st, 2008 at 1:07 pm

   http://​www​.reuters​.com/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​t​o​p​N​e​w​s​/​i​d​U​S​N​2​9​4​4​3​5​6​4​2​0​0​8​0​9​0​1​?​f​e​e​d​T​y​p​e​=​R​S​S​&​a​m​p​;​f​e​e​d​N​a​m​e​=​t​o​p​N​e​w​s​&​a​m​p​;​r​p​c​=​2​2​&​a​m​p​;​sp=tru

   Think about if this had been Chelsea.…

7. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on September 1st, 2008 at 1:27 pm

   Dang, i used all the basil mak­ing pesto, hence the rosemary/thyme combo.

   The only rea­son the “it isn’t her baby” story had legs was because folks couldn’t believe some­one would do a risky thing to have their baby born in Alaska. If you’d asked any Texan, they got it: if they’d been giv­ing a speech in Alaska, they would have done the same to have the baby born in Texas.

   And the nar­ra­tive of “we’re a fam­ily just like yours, only with moun­tains in the back­ground that’s not on a pull­down” just builds and builds …

   If i still had fresh basil, it woulda been moz­zarella or cream havarti on that tomato.

8. coozledad said on September 1st, 2008 at 1:34 pm

   A fam­ily that preaches absti­nence only edu­ca­tion.
   Poor child.

9. moe99 said on September 1st, 2008 at 2:00 pm

   Uh, Jeff, I know that many fam­i­lies have daugh­ters who are preg­nant out of wed­lock, but is that the meme they want to be play­ing out over the coun­try right now?

10. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on September 1st, 2008 at 2:04 pm

    27 min­utes to the abstinence-based edu­ca­tion crack: Danny, did you have the long pool, or the short? I missed by 7 min­utes, but i should know by now never to bet on the nose.

    Once again, for the third year in a row, my Hun­gar­ian pep­pers are all rot­ting before they’re ripe. Can’t be too much rain, either. Ideas, any­one? I’m will­ing to plant again if i had some hope of not see­ing my pep­per but­ter dreams go blackish-brown again.

11. Catherine said on September 1st, 2008 at 2:38 pm

    Jeff, I really do appre­ci­ate how you use humor to defuse situations.

    All the same, let’s deal with the ques­tion at hand. Take as a given that noone thinks it’s a good idea for unmar­ried 17 YOs to get knocked up. So, if abstinence-only edu­ca­tion is not to blame for this girl’s preg­nancy, what or who is?

12. alex said on September 1st, 2008 at 2:39 pm

    No clue, Jeff. Mine turned out teensy, but at least yel­low. Weird gar­den­ing year in gen­eral. The squir­rels are chomp­ing my toma­toes and bat­ting the pep­pers around on the ground like playthings.

13. coozledad said on September 1st, 2008 at 2:39 pm

    More an obser­va­tion than a crack, but whatever.

14. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on September 1st, 2008 at 3:03 pm

    Cather­ine — there’s no one to blame for a preg­nancy. I’ve said that from pul­pits, and not just lib­eral ones (actu­ally, i haven’t preached from lots of those, but some). Unless a crime’s involved, blame isn’t in the picture.

    I’m guess­ing a young man and young woman had sex, and a preg­nancy resulted. That’s gonna hap­pen. All we can do as com­mu­ni­ties and a cul­ture is fig­ure out which direc­tion we want to nudge the gen­eral trends — towards sex mainly within mar­riage, or “marriage-neutral” on sex­ual behav­ior and expres­sion? (I know, i know, we’ll dis­cuss gay mar­riage another day, promise.)

    But no one, lib­eral, con­ser­v­a­tive, what­ever, is well served by say­ing that a) you can do more than nudge, you can’t dic­tate, and b) stick­ing with your nudg­ing agenda when you face real­ity. Some­times, no mat­ter what you teach, say, or do, young unmar­ried peo­ple will get preg­nant because they will have sex at a cer­tain rate, no mat­ter what.

    Abstinence-based edu­ca­tion, as i encounter it in this area, does not hide or refuse to dis­cuss birth con­trol — that’s what they get ham­mered for, in fact. What they say is that your pro­tec­tion from preg­nancy is not absolute, and that your pro­tec­tion from myr­iad dis­eases is much less than you’d think, espe­cially con­sid­er­ing how care­ful peo­ple are in cars after mid­night or parent’s beds at 4:15 pm.

    But they get ‘em out, dis­cuss ‘em, and are can­did about their lim­i­ta­tions. For that, they’re called “abstinence-only.” But they aren’t, except to say fre­quently that “only absti­nence” gives you 100% con­trol of your body and your options.

    So then, we moderate/conservative folks say, if that’s out of bounds, what exactly is “com­pre­hen­sive sex ed”? Descrip­tions vary, and i don’t assume every­thing Dobson’s shop mails out is gen­er­ally true even if it hap­pened once in Mass­a­chu­setts. But the main dif­fer­ence in the cur­ric­ula is a) they, IMHO over­state the effec­tive­ness of con­tra­cep­tion, and b) hand out stuff directly. Oth­er­wise, not so much.

    Bris­tol and, i gather, Levi clearly had a con­tra­cep­tive fail­ure of some sort. Could have been juve­nile assump­tions about Cola douches (that was still preva­lent among col­lege juniors in 1980, as i recall), could have been a break, a tear, a half-on slip­page … what i don’t believe is that if there was a fish­bowl of con­doms at the school front office, they wouldn’t be think­ing about where to hold the cer­e­mony right now. Any­one can get ‘em eas­ily, and you can see how to put ‘em on right whether on the pack­age, on-line or on TV read­ily enough (i’ve seen the banana trick on the NBC Evening News).

    So i don’t blame a style of sex ed, though i’m bet­ting Sarah and Todd are blam­ing them­selves for some fail­ure of their parental mon­i­tor­ing plan of their 16 year old daugh­ter. When a baby enters the pic­ture, you just sit down and fig­ure out what there is to cel­e­brate (they rarely come at a con­ve­nient time even for cou­ples with a care­ful plan), even if adop­tion is at the other end of the process for you.

    Cather­ine, thanks for the ques­tion; Alex, some­one must know about pep­pers — more help, please, anyone!

15. coozledad said on September 1st, 2008 at 3:08 pm

    More on the sub­ject here. NSFW:
    http://​www​.free​way​blog​ger​.com/​a​b​s​t​i​n​e​n​c​e​o​n​l​y​/​h​o​me.htm

16. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on September 1st, 2008 at 3:17 pm

    rotfl, cooze

    Just caught this at NYTimes –

    “Mr. Obama, in his first remarks on the mat­ter, raised his voiced when asked whether his cam­paign or other Demo­c­ra­tic oper­a­tives were work­ing to advance rumors sur­round­ing the Palin family.

    “Our peo­ple were not involved in any way in this and they will not be,” Mr. Obama snapped. “And if I ever thought there was some­body in my cam­paign that was involved in some­thing like that, they’d be fired, OK?”

    Mr. Obama said the preg­nancy “has no rel­e­vance to Gov­er­nor Palin’s per­for­mance as a gov­er­nor or her poten­tial per­for­mance as a vice pres­i­dent.” He added that, “my mother had me when she was 18. How fam­ily deals with issues and teen-age chil­dren – that shouldn’t be the topic of our politics.”

    “So,” he added, “I would strongly urge peo­ple to back off these kinds of stories.””

17. coozledad said on September 1st, 2008 at 4:29 pm

    Yep. The daughter’s preg­nancy has noth­ing to do with the can­di­dacy, but bad poli­cies cer­tainly do. That’s our future Pres­i­dent. Dig­ni­fied, sober, and cor­rect.
    It would seem some folks at the Amer­i­can Spec­ta­tor take a more extreme view:
    http://​www​.spec​ta​tor​.org/​b​l​o​g​g​e​r​.​a​s​p​?​B​l​o​g​I​D​=14417

18. Gasman said on September 1st, 2008 at 4:30 pm

    Jeff (tmmo)
    I am quite in favor of lim­it­ing teen preg­nan­cies, but sta­tis­ti­cally, the absti­nence only model has not proved to be effec­tive. If it worked I would be 100% in favor of it. I’ve taught in high school and it is incred­i­bly naive to think that in a soci­ety awash in sex­ual images on/in TV, pop­u­lar music, movies, etc. that absti­nence only will have any chance of work­ing. Let’s do what has proven to have the great­est chance of suc­cess. If par­ents aren’t doing an ade­quate job at home, it’s time for some­one else to step in and fill the void.

    Church seems to be a log­i­cal and safe choice, but how many denom­i­na­tions are will­ing to even dis­cuss sex openly with teens let alone actu­ally pro­vide them with facts con­cern­ing sex. My wife and I taught a sex ed. cur­ricu­lum that the Pres­by­ter­ian Church designed. It was very frank but sought to demys­tify sex and get the teens to be able to talk openly about it. Make no mis­take, it did not advo­cate sex­ual activ­ity by teens and did con­vey the mes­sage that the only sure method of birth con­trol and dis­ease pre­ven­tion was absti­nence. How­ever, it also pro­vided teens with ample facts regard­ing all aspects of sex­u­al­ity. Any data that I have seen indi­cates that such pro­grams have the high­est chance of suc­cess. I’m not talk­ing liberal/conservative any­thing, I’m talk­ing about lim­it­ing the num­ber of teenage preg­nan­cies. Absti­nence only sim­ply does not work. If you have data which dis­putes this, please share it with me.

    Amer­i­cans are gen­er­ally unable to talk about sex, and the church is miss­ing the boat by not step­ping in and pro­vid­ing guid­ance. God cre­ated us as sex­ual beings and it seems like the church as a whole would rather pre­tend that keep­ing teens igno­rant will solve the prob­lem. It hasn’t worked yet and is unlikely to do any­time in the future.

19. Catherine said on September 1st, 2008 at 4:53 pm

    So, is a “parental mon­i­tor­ing plan” the same thing as parenting?

20. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on September 1st, 2008 at 4:59 pm

    Hey, the Pres­bys had a very inter­est­ing posi­tion paper try­ing to take a Bib­li­cal, not Bib­li­cist approach to sex­u­al­ity (no, i’ve made up Bib­li­cist, but if Andrew can make up Chris­tian­ist, then fair’s fair), using a con­struct they called “jus­tice love.”

    They took a pound­ing from con­ser­v­a­tive groups, and then did what dri­ves us mod­er­ates crazy — they totally flinched, and you can’t even find a link to the paper or the dis­cus­sion any­where from With­er­spoon St. to the fur­thest reaches of the inter­nets. My denom­i­na­tion has taken a try or two at hav­ing a dis­cern­ment process over sex­u­al­ity and a Bib­li­cal moral­ity (that’s the whole Bible + tra­di­tion, vs. Bib­li­cists tak­ing iso­lated verses and hang­ing the Titanic from them, hook by hook), but one anguished scream from the right, and the left folds up like a house of Obama pamphlets.

    If schools are say­ing not “abstinence-only,” but are allowed to say strongly and clearly “only absti­nence” is a guar­an­tee, and has hon­est and accu­rate info on con­tra­cep­tives, most con­ser­v­a­tives in most com­munties will be con­tent, along with ask­ing for an opt-out for the folks we know are off to our right flank. That’s what we nego­ti­ated in this town — but i got pegged as “abstinence-only” because i refused to tol­er­ate peo­ple demo­niz­ing the folks teach­ing the pre­vi­ous curriculum.

    But we moved to a com­pre­hen­sive cur­ricu­lum, and i think two kids out of 600 were opted-out. I say we all won (well, not those two).

    But i wish the Pres­bys would take a sec­ond try with the “jus­tice love” the­o­log­i­cal analy­sis — they had some­thing going there for all us vast, mushy mid­dle folks in the main­line denom­i­na­tions with lots of anx­ious neo-theo-whoa-conservatives in our congregations.

    ps — Gas­man, i guess what i’m say­ing is that most abstinence-only pro­grams (so called) aren’t in prac­tice what the debate makes them seem, and it isn’t that hard to build con­sen­sus on this issue. Cath, there’s par­ent­ing, and then there’s … well, after about 14, you’re mainly parcel­ing out the money and watch­ing to see how much of what you taught actu­ally took. You get some oppor­tu­ni­ties, but not a lot of new room to maneu­ver, except when they ask you how to sign up for the col­lege classes you actu­ally want and how to deal with bosses … and even then, they don’t always lis­ten. At that point, you’re mon­i­tor­ing as a par­ent. Fair?

21. Suzi said on September 1st, 2008 at 5:29 pm

    Did Bris­tol even have the abor­tion con­ver­sa­tion with her par­ents? Did she have the option of ter­mi­nat­ing the preg­nancy 5 months ago? Would her mother have allowed her to ter­mi­nate? Accord­ing to the Fem­i­nists for Life bunch of which Palin is a promi­nent mem­ber, rape and incest vic­itms would not have abor­tion rights much less any­body else so I expect her Mom and she had a come to Jesus meet­ing about hav­ing the baby. Poor child is right. Poor women of Amer­ica if this broad ends up POTUS.

22. Suzi said on September 1st, 2008 at 5:32 pm

    Obama and Biden dropped in on Indi­ana lake coun­try yes­ter­day — had lunch and schmoozed the Hoosiers.

    http://​www​.jour​nal​gazette​.net/​a​p​p​s​/​p​b​c​s​.​d​l​l​/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​?​A​I​D​=​/​2​0​0​8​0​9​0​1​/​L​O​C​A​L​/​8​0​9​010352

23. jcburns said on September 1st, 2008 at 6:14 pm

    I’m really charmed by the above story. I wish there was enough time for Obama and Biden to do much the same through­out Indi­ana, Michi­gan, Ohio…and Penn­syl­va­nia and West Virginia.

    Just stop in, share a sand­wich, lis­ten and chat and let them see he’s human, he cares, he’s smart, he can change things.

    It’s bizarre in some ways after this seem­ingly nev­erend­ing pri­mary process that the gen­eral elec­tion cam­paign is much more of a sprint.

24. moe99 said on September 1st, 2008 at 6:43 pm

    Do not for­get that the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion, whose views are shared by McCain and Palin, this sum­mer pro­posed reg­u­la­tions that would make it ok for health care work­ers in hos­pi­tals to refuse to pro­vide IUDs and birth con­trol to patients, if it was against their reli­gious beliefs.

    http://​tinyurl​.com/​5j5jwe

    Peo­ple who are in the health care pro­fes­sion are in a sec­u­lar pro­fes­sion. If they object to pro­vid­ing birth con­trol pills, they need to find another career.

25. Suzi said on September 1st, 2008 at 8:25 pm

    Moe, you are so right. Next, or maybe it’s already hap­pened, they’ll refuse to treat openly gay patients.
    I’m so GD sick of these reli­gious aholes try­ing to con­trol every GD aspect of our lives.

26. Suzi said on September 1st, 2008 at 8:38 pm

    If I had been up at Pier 32 when Obama dropped in, I’m afraid I might have asked him if he has the balls to stand up to Dob­son and his clan.

27. Jolene said on September 1st, 2008 at 9:18 pm

    Biden and Obama seem to be charm­ing lots of peo­ple. Two pieces from the Wash­ing­ton Post and their 60 Min­utes interview.

    http://​www​.wash​ing​ton​post​.com/​w​p​-​d​y​n​/​c​o​n​t​e​n​t​/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​2​0​0​8​/​0​8​/​3​1​/​A​R​2​0​0​8​0​8​3​1​0​1​9​5​4.html

    http://​voices​.wash​ing​ton​post​.com/​t​h​e​-​t​r​a​i​l​/​2​0​0​8​/​0​9​/​0​1​/​b​i​d​e​n​_​v​i​s​i​t​s​_​s​c​r​a​n​t​o​n​_​p​a​_​c​h​i​l​d​.​h​t​m​l#more

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7jdzyUhYWo&eurl=http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=obama%20biden%2060%20minutes&ie=UTF-8&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:e

28. Jolene said on September 1st, 2008 at 9:28 pm

    Whoops! Part 2 of the Biden/Obama 60 Min­utes interview.

    http://​www​.youtube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=​V​L​2​x​A​O​C​7​r​V​o​&​a​m​p​;​f​e​a​t​u​r​e​=​r​elated

29. beb said on September 1st, 2008 at 9:47 pm

    Cather­ine asks: “So, if abstinence-only edu­ca­tion is not to blame for this girl’s preg­nancy, what or who is?”

    A turkey baster,perhaps? Worked for Mary Cheney. Oth­er­wise someone’s dick. I guess they for­got to douche with coca cola, the sure cure for unwanted pregnancies…

    Day by day Palin is prov­ing her­self to be the per­fect Repub­li­can — in trou­ble for abuse of power, preg­nant minor chil­dren.… I don’t think this is what McCain had in mind when he picked her but this is so “what you sow so shall you reap” moment.

30. Gasman said on September 1st, 2008 at 11:03 pm

    I agree with Obama that Palin’s daugh­ter should be exempt from pol­i­tics. Sarah Palin, how­ever, is another mat­ter. I have been unim­pressed with her state­ment gush­ing about how “proud” they were of her. Palin is a role model not only to Alaskans but osten­si­bly young girls across the coun­try. She should have either remained totally silent on the mat­ter or expressed her dis­ap­point­ment with the unplanned preg­nancy and then made a state­ment about how dif­fi­cult it would be for her daugh­ter. This preg­nancy is totally at odds with Palin’s absti­nence only pol­icy. She is send­ing very mixed mes­sages to teens across the coun­try. This should not be por­trayed as an option teens should consider.

31. Gasman said on September 1st, 2008 at 11:05 pm

    Suzi,
    I was at Pier 32 a cou­ple of weeks ago when we vis­ited fam­ily in Ft. Wayne and Wood­burn. My uncle is friends with the own­ers and my grand­mother has actu­ally invested some in the place. The own­ers seem to be a nice cou­ple and have a nice lit­tle restaurant.

32. Terry WAlter said on September 1st, 2008 at 11:26 pm

    Whad­daya expect from the girl? Any NASCAR fan can tell you Bris­tol is known for rub­bin’ and bangin’.

33. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on September 1st, 2008 at 11:31 pm

    Time vis­its Was­sila — http://​www​.time​.com/​t​i​m​e​/​p​r​i​n​t​o​u​t​/​0​,​8​8​1​6​,​1​8​3​7​8​6​2​,​0​0.html

    Obama or McCain on Nov. 4, i like the national con­ver­sa­tion we seem to be hav­ing. This isn’t some­thing we’re going to solve or any­thing, but if we can toss out the “absti­nence only” myth and the “con­dom cure-all” myths as equally unfair to both their advo­cates and the kids who are try­ing to become adults lis­ten­ing to it all, i’m good with every­one. Really. If we can fig­ure out what to say to 14 year olds who are try­ing to fig­ure out if they have same sex attrac­tion or are just admir­ing the heck out of a cute friend, we may actu­ally be health­ier as a soci­ety for talk­ing about all this.

    My per­sonal bias is still that you shouldn’t have sex with any­one you couldn’t even remotely imag­ine hav­ing a child with — i’m not Catholic, and i don’t mean you have to want that out­come, but my teach­ing & preach­ing bench­mark is exactly that: if you would absolutely not want to raise a child with a per­son in your imag­i­na­tion, you shouldn’t, um, yeah — do that.

    Where that puts me on pre­mar­i­tal sex is anyone’s guess. Scary news flash — the Bible has noth­ing to say on that sub­ject. I waited, but i’m a cau­tious, method­i­cal guy, as is the won­der­ful woman who chose to marry me. Cau­tion, not scrip­ture, led me to that choice, because there is not a Bib­li­cal verse that unpacks that lit­tle ques­tion. But i think a Bib­li­cal (not Bib­li­cist) approach leads you to exactly this — if you wouldn’t even remotely want to have a child with them, don’t do it, even with protection.

    Per­versely, i think that advice works in a hypo­thet­i­cal way even for gays and les­bians. Had a dea­con at a for­mer church who was qui­etly part­nered with another lady (i prayed at their ser­vice, did not con­duct it, applauded hap­pily with all at the end), and she thought it worked as a stan­dard, even if it didn’t, ah, work.

    Good night, sweet princes and princesses! May flights of Alaskan coots wing thee to thy rest, and a blessed Labor Day.

34. Suzi said on September 1st, 2008 at 11:48 pm

    Gas­man, I’ve heard good things about Pier 32, will have to get up there some day soon.

    So, to drone on about Palin, do y’all sup­pose she’ll carry and deliver another baby while in office? fine if she does, I just won­der if the pill is accept­able now that she has had a Downs baby and may become veep. ya gotta won­der, right? So many rabid anti-choice folks are against, you know, abortifacients.

35. Gasman said on September 2nd, 2008 at 12:03 am

    Jeff(tmmo),
    I have never heard of this “con­dom cure-all” method of which you speak. Nobody that I am aware of is sell­ing sex-ed that is con­dom only. That is this teacher’s class­room expe­ri­ence. That’s the canard that the evan­gel­i­cals toss out to scare peo­ple into believ­ing that lib­er­als like me want their chil­dren to go around for­ni­catin’ all over every­where. Plenty of folks, how­ever, def­i­nitely are sell­ing the abso­lutist “absti­nence only” line as being God’s own sex-ed cur­ricu­lum. They have been told by Jesus, Joseph, and Mary that any­thing else is a sin and if you dis­agree, then you are of the devil his­self. That kind of logic does not serve our soci­ety well. I’ve seen these folks up close and they don’t want to hear any rhetoric other than their own.

    It seems to me that the more con­trol­ling and abso­lutist the stand on absti­nence, the more likely that there will be teen preg­nancy. It seems when you take a hor­mone laden teen and say to him/her “just say no” and expect them to make ratio­nal life alter­ing adult deci­sions you are not fully prepar­ing them for real­ity and you are delud­ing yourself.

    Teens brains aren’t fully devel­oped. We don’t let them sign con­tracts, but we’ll let them pro­cre­ate because it makes us uncom­fort­able to talk to them about sex­u­al­ity of any kind. They def­i­nitely want to know about sex and if they’re not get­ting infor­ma­tion from their parents/church/school we can be pretty sure that they will be con­duct­ing field exper­i­ments on their own. Add bar­rels of hor­mones to an under­de­vel­oped brain and you’ve got kids begat­tin’ kids.

    If you truly want less teen begat­tin’, then we need some­thing other than “just say no.”

36. Laura said on September 2nd, 2008 at 12:08 am

    McCain’s camp says they knew about the preg­nancy all along. Really?

37. Gasman said on September 2nd, 2008 at 12:13 am

    Suzi,
    I looked at the photo in the JG and to my sur­prise, Obama is sit­ting where I sat and Biden is in what was my wife’s chair. I didn’t real­ize that we would be their open­ing act, so to speak. On Sun­days they have a pretty good lunch buf­fet. They had enough seafood and sal­ads to keep this veg­e­tar­ian happy.

    As for Palin, I’m sure she’d get preg­nant while in office. After all, it’s totally up to God to deter­mine who gets preg­nant. For her deliv­ery, she’d fly back to Alaska, drop the kid in the field while draw­ing a bead on a bull moose. She’d then cut the cord while gut­ting said moose. Then, she’d slap her new­born child onto a tit and gnaw on some raw moose meat while extolling the virtues of the sec­ond half of the sec­ond amend­ment. Glory, glory hallelujah!

38. Dave K. said on September 2nd, 2008 at 12:37 am

    I for­warded the WAPO links from Jolene to my brother, “Pilot Joe” for his con­sid­er­a­tion. He replied via e-mail:

    “You should broaden your horizens to include more than a left wing paper. You now have time to catch some real news. Try Mike Mcon­nell on 700 wlw around 9 till noon.And Rush is on wowo at noon. Keep a open mind, and lis­ten to another view.”

    At first, I just thought that using “Rush”, “real news”, and “open mind”, in the same state­ment was was kind of funny. Then I real­ized that many vot­ers really think just like that, and now they don’t even have to admit they won’t vote for Barack because he’s black, they can say they’re being open minded and vot­ing for a woman! Not funny at all.

    Thank you for the “60 Min­utes” link. I thought Sen­a­tors Obama and Biden were out­stand­ing. (Is “60 Min­utes” “…real news…?)

39. MarkH said on September 2nd, 2008 at 3:25 am

    Strictly OT, and going back to the car entries on Aug. 28:

    New and rare, yes. Super­charged, yes. But, MR MARK and Nancy, both those cars are the all-new ZR-1, not the Z06. All 6.2 liter, 638 horse­power and $102,600 base price of them. HUGE dif­fer­ence in price and performance.

    And, Alex, while I con­grat­u­late you on your choice of the Sol­stice, please don’t insult it with com­par­isons to the ’70’s Vette. Com­pletely dif­fer­ent ani­mals. Have you ever seen, let alone dri­ven, one of these behemoths?

    http://​used​corvettes​for​sale​.com/​1​9​7​5​.shtml

    The clos­est Corvette to your car, and its Sat­urn Sky cousin, in size and spirit is all the way back to the orig­i­nal, the ’53-’55. Still under­pow­ered, until they put a V8 in the ’55, but all the orig­i­nal spirit was there. The 1962 was the last of this style and still com­pa­ra­ble to the Sol­stice in its soul.

    http://​used​corvettes​for​sale​.com/​1​9​5​4​.shtml

    It isn’t rea­son­able, nor accept­able to me, to lable every­thing GM puts out as crap, or to say no one wants or buys it. Yes, they are in big trou­ble now, due to the knee­jerk mar­ket changes. But begin­ning in 2000, they started a real turn­around in offer­ings with style and, yes, build qual­ity. Alex, you can’t be faulted for assum­ing your car is “still in devel­op­ment”, because GM always had a his­tory of rush­ing a car to mar­ket and let the con­sumer (and dealer) sort out all the issues. And, when they finally got it right, after five or seven years, the pub­lic had lost patience and quit buy­ing them. Some exam­ples: Pon­tiac Fiero, Olds Aurora, and the ’70’s 350 diesel, which, yes, they even­tu­ally did get right. But, who cared by then?

    I’m not an apol­o­gist for every­thing GM has done to the pub­lic. It’s just that since Bob Lutz came on the scene after he got shafted at Chrysler, a real car guy HAS had some influ­ence on prod­uct design and devel­op­ment at GM. He is respon­si­ble for the Sol­stice and Sky. As Alex pointed out, for way too long in the ’70’s and ’80’s, the bean coun­ters had way too much influ­ence. GM needs to shed one more line, prob­a­bly Buick, lean out the model offer­ings, and they’ll be back.

    If you want some no-holds-barred inside info and opin­ion about what really goes on in Detroit, here’s one of my favorite sites:

    http://​www​.autoex​trem​ist​.com/

    DeLorenzo is not hope­ful about Detroit, but he does offer some solid crit­i­cism GM, Ford and Chrysler had bet­ter heed.

40. alex said on September 2nd, 2008 at 8:11 am

    Shit, I was a stone’s throw from Pier 32 on Sun­day and missed all the fun. Boated over on Mon­day and had a cock­tail there and lis­tened to all the peo­ple oohing and aahing about the events the night before. Then encoun­tered yet another rube who said he’d heard about Obama hav­ing two birth cer­tifi­cates and how he can’t vote for some­one with a Mus­lim name when we’re at war with Muslims.

    How do they broad­cast this shit to people’s den­tal fill­ings anyway?

41. alex said on September 2nd, 2008 at 9:26 am

    Hey, Mark H. Totally missed what you said above.

    Yeah, the Sol­stice is much more like the orig­i­nal ‘50s Vette in terms of size, but some of its tricks, like the roof and the shape of the front fend­ers, are bor­rowed from the ‘70s.

    No offense intended as regards GM. It’s just that I haven’t yet for­given them for all of the bad cars I’ve had over the years. I’m giv­ing them another chance after hav­ing sworn “never again.” This time I’m sim­ply unim­pressed, as opposed to feel­ing like I’ve been screwed in the ass.

    Thanks for the link to autoex­trem­ist, btw.

42. Suzi said on September 2nd, 2008 at 4:30 pm

    Gas­man, you’ve pre­sented such a com­pelling vision of Ideal Amer­i­can Wom­an­hood, I think I’m gonna have to switch par­ties and get me an assault rifle.