The Long Good Bye

It's only a month from now, but I'm sure they'll come up with something to make it feel like a year. Of incarceration.

AOL is kicking its bloggers [journalers, whatever] out of here as of October 31. Halloween. How perfect. They promise to have a plan to help us move to another spot. Or we can do the move manually ourselves. I wonder if the movers are cute.

I think I'll back up everything in WORD. And then let them move my stuff someplace else for me -- as long as I like the amenities. You know guacamole and chips, free M&M peanuts. 

Meanwhile I'll try to make each one of these final days something to remember, as we wind down here at the world's cheesiest place to blog. Sorry, I meant sleaziest.

So What If The Dow Crashed -- Alexei Ramirez Hit A Grand Slam

I wonder what they're going to call yesterday's record-setting Wall Street dive? 

Black and Blue Monday? 

Stone Cold Monday?

Pelosi's Meltdown?

Along with all the bad news, there was some good news too. Yesterday, after a three hour rain delay, the White Sox played Detroit in a makeup game. Win and they tie the Twins at the top of the Central division. Lose and they go home.

In case you missed it, I know they showed the replay of Alexei Ramirez' at bat no matter where you live -- watch it on SportsCenter.

Game tied 2 - 2. Sox load the bases in the sixth. Cuban Rookie Ramirez steps up to the plate. He's been compared to the Cubs' Alfonso Soriano because he's so lean, but his face and the way he hits the ball remind me more of Roberto Clemente.

I read that Ozzie told Ramirez to be patient before he went up to bat. Instead he hit the first pitch and set the rookie record for grand slams. As soon as he hit the ball his arms went up in celebration and he took off, pumping his fist as he rounded all the bases, jumping into the arms of the three players he drove home.

What a great at bat at such a perfect time. Sox go on to win 8-2. Today while Cubs fans are having a rally at noon to kick off the NL play-off season, the White Sox have to play one last game against the Twins. Whoever wins goes on to the AL playoffs.

Sure, the markets are a mess. But today hope is alive on the north and south sides of Chicago.

Don't Miss The Train Wreck This Thursday

Until this last weekend I was very disappointed that the Dems were not going after Sarah Palin. They haven't spent a minute dissecting her pathetic bona fides. Or deriding her achingly misinformed and utterly meaningless responses during her interviews with Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric. That tete a tete she had with Dimwitty or Hannity or whatever his name is was like watching a speed date. I kept waiting for him to ask her "So, what's your sign?" The two minutes I saw was mostly laughter and giggles, signifying nothing.

If it weren't for Tina Fey's brilliant deconstruction of her non answer answers and Fargo-esque accent, Sarah Palin has been given a free pass by the bigwigs in the Democratic party.

In fact, to my dismay, Hillary has been positively reclusive since losing the nomination, when I was expecting her to at least pick up a fork and stick it into the Gov. 

Then, over the last few days, I saw interviews with Obama and Biden and one with Hill's Bill. And I finally understood the Democrats' strategy with the half-baked Alaskan. Their plan is right out of an NFL playbook.

They're doing what football teams do. Don't say anything about your opponent that will make good bulletin board material. Don't give the GOP anything they can use. Don't feed the fire so Republicans can use it to rile up the rednecks and right wing religiosos.

I noticed how carefully they talk about the Palinator. Everything they have to say about the Governor is uber complimentary. They admire her style, her background, her public speaking skills. They respect her as a working mother. They feel her pain about that whole family trouble thing. Ad nauseum.

That's because they all know that Thursday's coming. And if Sexy Sarah's previous forays into fielding questions from the network anchors are any indication, her train won't even make it out of the station.

My only concern is that viewers' expectations will be so low that if she manages to use "bailout" correctly in a sentence, her appearance at the debate will be considered an enormous success.

Somebody tell her that from now on she doesn't get a gold star for attendance.

And this time, the ammo is real.

My Favorite Paul Newman Screen Moment

I could rip Nancy Pelosi a new body part for thinking she could dump on the Republicans and they wouldn't bite back. Did you think they wouldn't kill the bailout package after your whining blamefest the day before the vote? I won't go there. I want to rise above what a stupid waste of time she is and talk about Paul Newman.  

The rest of you can have all the great scenes in Cat, Hud, Hustler, Cool Hand, Butch Cassidy, The Sting, et cetera. My favorite Paul Newman moment is in a movie called the Outrage. You won't find it on any of his best of lists because as movies go, it wasn't very good. But even bad movies have scenes that rise above themselves from time to time.

Outrage was a black and white western made during a time when American directors were stealing Japanese fables and turning them into horse operas. Outrage was a story of a horrible event as told from several different points of view. All you have to watch is the opening. You can skip the rest.

As I recall, and I shall return after checking to see how good my memory is, Newman plays a cowboy, a bad cowboy. You know he's bad because his hair was dyed black. As the movie opens, he is lying on the ground with his head resting against a wagon wheel, and his hat is covering his face.

We watch as a speeding stagecoach comes around a bend in the road. The camera cuts back to Newman's face as he tips his hat up for a better view of what's going by from his partially concealed position. From this point, we never see the stagecoach again, only hear it. The camera is locked on Newman, as if too dumbstruck by what it sees to care about anything else. For what seems like five minutes, we watch Newman's eyes slowly follow the movement of the coach like a mountain lion sizing up its prey. In those few moments completely riveted by his face, we learn more about his character from just watching the subtle changes in his expression than hearing anything he might have had to say.

Even though the film was black and white, you could tell how blue his eyes were because the color registered as an unusually light gray. Somehow that made them and him even more mesmerizing.

Yep, I'll take the opening of Outrage as my single favorite Paul Newman moment. That chiseled face and those incredible eyes said it all.

30 Republican Women More Qualified to Be Vice President Than Sarah Palin

The 2008 campaign could be truly historic, Not because Barack Obama is the first African American to be nominated for president.

But because Sarah Palin, the first female Republican nominee for vice president, is so clearly unqualified for the job that, in an unprecedented move, she could well be asked to step down and be replaced.

Here, for your perusal, are thirty women more qualified than she is for the job. Click on their names to read about them.

Senators:

Lisa Murkowski, Alaska

Olympia Snowe, Maine

Susan Collins, Maine

Elizabeth Dole. North Carolina

Kay Bailey Hutchison, Texas

Governors:

Olene Walker, Utah

Linda Lingle, Hawaii

M. Jodi Rell, Connecticut

Members of the House:

Ileana Ros-Lehtinen Florida

Deborah Pryce, Ohio

Barbara Cubin, Wyoming

Sue Myrick North Carolina

Jo Ann Emerson, Missouri

Kay Granger, Texas

Mary Bono, California

Heather Wilson , New Mexico

Judith Borg Biggert , Illinois

Shelley Moore Capito, West Virginia

Marsha Blackburn, Tennessee

Ginny Brown-Waite, Florida

Candice Miller, Michigan

Marilyn Musgrave, Colorado

Thelma Drake, Virginia

Virginia Foxx, North Carolina

Cathy McMorris Rodgers, West Virginia

Jean Schmidt, Ohio

Cabinet:

Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of State

Margaret Spellings, Secretary of Education

Mary Peters, Secretary of Transportation

Susan Schwab, US Special Trade Representative

Sarah Palin Sends Her Regrets

Personally, I don't think either McCain the Pain or Me Llama Obama is a particularly good debater. It would have been gratifying to have Hill the Pill up there taking them both on.

I also didn't hear any particularly earthshattering sound bites from either one of these primetime mimes. They could have phoned it in. I heard no brilliant thoughts, no innovative programs, no inspirational ideas, and not one spark of creative thinking to solve to the mess we're in.

Here we are in an economic Armagedden to rival the crash of 1929 and *yawn* I'm still waiting for a single original proposal that would make my world a better place.

I noticed right away that Obama called McCain, "John." With a friendly "we're here to argue, but we're still collegial" tone. But McCain called Obama "Senator Obama" and seemed to treat him with disdain. Soon Obama stopped calling the little guy, "John."

But tonight's single most shocking moment wasn't anything either one of these peripatetic, pathetic presidential hopefuls said or didn't say. Nope.

It was Sarah Palin. Or lack of Sarah Palin. If anyone should have been there, it was she. Was she being punished for sounding like a hockey mom instead of the potential leader of the free world during her interview with Katie Couric?  And didn't Katie Couric have the most perplexed look on her face during Sarah's endless rambling, non-answers? Huh? What are you saying?

Not having Sarah Palin at the debate was a big mistake. All kinds of alarms went off. It's the one place she should have been at the one time she needed to be there. Especially since she was specifically invited by the networks. So she could analyze Obama's performance like Joe "The Schmoe" Biden analyzed McCain. I guess the GOP wanted to save the inevitable Sarah Palin train wreck for next week.

"We invited the Republican vice presidential nominee to join us tonight, but they sent Rudy Giuliani in her place."

Howdy Doody Rudy? To quote Frank Barone, that elegant mincer of words, "Holy Crap!!!"

I thought John McCain's announcement earlier in the week that he would  be suspending his campaign was a huge mistake, a major PR gaffe, and created unnecessary anxiety about our current situation. What we need most of all now is for the campaign to continue. McCain made it seem as though the government was so out of control that everything had to stop while he went back to DC to fix it. A decision I found precipitous and very unpresidential.

Even worse, he backtracked, which made him seem indecisive and even more unpresidential. 

But the fact that Sarah Palin wasn't there was the most shocking development. Keeping her out of harm's way confirms her incompetence. As if we needed any more proof.

Meanwhile her opponent, Joe "I am NOT a Schmoe" Biden, disseccted McCain's performance nicely. The way you might expect. But I wasn't really listening to what he said, because I kept wondering why McCain's campaign puppeteers thought it was a good idea to keep Sarah Palin at home.

She should have been present an accounted for. Her absence was the elephant in the room. And Rudy "How's Yer Booty" Giuliani was an odd, awkward choice to take her place. Was he there to remind us about 9-11 AGAIN? Was his presence intended as a subliminal suggestion that the Republicans are the only party who can make the country safe from terrorists? As I recall they didn't do a very good job back in 2001.

For me, listening to Rudy Tootie was just a constant reminder that Sarah Palin was a no show. Is that the plan? To keep her under wraps from now until the election, because she is starting to become an embarrassment to the McCain campaign?

Ya think?

Meanwhile, is Rudy going to sit in for Sarah at the vice presidential debates too?  Or will Tina Fey do the honors? 

It's a Miracle

There's a new runway open today at O'Hare airport. It was finished two months early. And 33 million dollars under budget. Maybe the contractor for that project should take over Wall Street.

Stealth Customer Service

After posting the previous entry whining about my life in general and Micro Center service people in particular, someone from Micro Center's customer service department showed up with a message for me in my comments section. [If you want to see his comment, you can find it yourself.]

At least that's who "Albert" claimed to be.

He asked me to email him with some numbers from my first receipt or my return receipt and I sent him both. For some reason his familiarity with the array of numerals seemed to give him some customer service credibility.

I also asked him how he found my blog.

I got a reply on what amounted to Micro Cener email letterhead -- although it could be a Nigerian front for all I know.

Apparently MC's customer service gets alerts whenever there's a mention of their store on the internet.

I have had words sucked up by software alerts before. A couple of years ago I remember using the word "pussy," in an entry to refer to someone who was a big chicken. And a link to that word in my blog showed up on a porn site when I Googled my blog one day. I think I changed the word to "chicken."  Yeah, I know, "chicken" has its own cult following, but so far I haven't been included.

Meanwhile I told Albert that I would be sending in my angry customer reply survey that I spent half an hour filling out.  He said that sending it in would not be necessary. Rats, I really went to town on that thing.

Another part of me is so paranoid about what is true and what isn't true here in Internet Land that my exchange with Micro Center's alleged customer service department makes me wonder if Albert is really who he says he is. Or just an undercover MC sales associate working as an internet operative to prevent complaints from cranky customers from getting to headquarters.

On the other hand, I could just assume that Albert is real and my sad experience will become a teaching tool for the tool that waited on me. 

I wonder if tool boy will have to go back to remedial sales associate training school and a pass a written test to show that he has learned where the Apple Room is located in the store. It's probably a multiple choice test, not an essay, since that would require spelling skills.

The Apple Room is located in what part of the Micro Center store?
A. Over dere
B. Wait here, I'll ask someone
C. We don't sell no farking produce
D. Huh?

After the written portion, he'll probably have to take the road test too, first to prove that he can walk and talk at the same time. Then to demonstrate that he can use "G4 computer" correctly in a sentence. Next can he actually listen when an older female customer who isn't "hot" asks for a MAC keyboard? And finally, can he remember that it's nicer to greet someone who walks into the store with "Hi, Welcome to Micro Center," instead of continuing his conversation with that chick from repairs and returns that he'd like to bang.

I told Albert that, ironically, my experience with everyone else at the store, from the woman who took my money to the guy at the return desk to Albert himself, has been very pleasant. But, since it turns out there's an Apple Store not far from me and I've got a Best Buy in my town, I probably won't be coming back to Micro Center ever again.

Unless that gift card is really big.

Watch the Skidmarks

Sometimes my life is just poopy pants. Over the weekend, my keyboard got wet. Real wet. When it kept hitting the letter "h" even when I wasn't touching anything, I knew it was fried.

On Monday, when I was in the city, I asked someone if they knew a place close by that sold Apple products. Computers, not fruit. Why yes, try the Micro Center on Elston. So I drove over to the Micro Center which was a mere ten minutes away and not far from the highway home.  How convenient I thought, as I walked into the store, unaware of what was waiting for me.

Looking around, I saw a man and a woman wearing matching outfits, so I assumed they worked for the store and weren't in a singing group. They looked at me and continued talking and doing that stupid flirty giggle stuff that sounds like nails on a chalkboard to someone over fifty.

Oh crap, I have to break up this love nest.

"Excuse me."

Nothing.

"[THROATING CLEARING] Ex-cuuse me."

Nothing.

"EXCUUUUUUUUSE ME!!"

Suddenly they stopped humping each other and pulled apart like taffy. Oh good, they've decided to help me.

"I have a G4 and I need a new keyboard."

"Aisle 23." 

"Would you mind showing me what's available?" [Since that's your job, slacker boy.]

He takes me to an aisle with nothing but black keyboards.

"I want a white keyboard."

He shows me the only white keyboard, but it's ergonomic and I don't like those.

"Is this a keyboard for a MAC?"

He shows me the front of the box which says MAC compatible.

"I don't want a MAC compatible, I want a MAC keyboard. You don't have a MAC keyboard?

He says not to worry they're compatible. 

I knew that by now.

Then he sees another keyboard that is less ergonomic and also white.

"How about this one?"  At this point I trust he is just showing me a keyboard with a different finger configuration.  Since I like it, I take it.

I get it home and take a close look at the front of the box -- for WINDOWS and DOS. This is a PC keyboard. All the way. I can't even plug it into my computer.

@#)($*$%#@)($*~!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So I call an IT guy I know.  He says that the Micro Center store has what I want. "Didn't he take you into the Apple Room?  There is a whole room where all the MAC stuff is -- keyboards, everything."

Now, I'm pissed. 'No he didn't. and I'm home now."

"Is there a Best Buy near you? They should have one."

There's one in my town and yes, they did have a really nice skinny, lightweight MAC keyboard, although I guess technically it's called an APPLE keyboard. Sorry, Mr. Jobs, I made a mistake.

Today I returned the PC keyboard. I drove back downtown to do the deed. I figure I spent more than ten bucks in gas to take it back since I had no plans to go downtown today.

I told the guy at the return desk how I felt. A really stupid sales mope sold me this keyboard for my MAC. It's for a PC. And how come he didn't show me where the Apple Room was in the back? 

"He should have."

"But he didn't. Tell him he's an idiot. He also lost a sale because I found one at Best Buy."

I went out to my car and decided to return some phone calls before leaving. I called someone else I know to ask if there might be an Apple store near my house.  He said yes -- only five miles away. I've been to the Apple Store downtown.  I would have been treated like royalty, because they do that at Apple stores.

After making that call, I went to start my car. Nothing. WTF?

I contacted a friend close by who offered, without any begging on my part, to come over and give me a jump.  [Shut up, Remo. You, too, Chris.]

Only the jumper cables didn't work. The car would start and pretend it was running, then suddenly shut down. Great. We tried again and again. My friend even got in the car, because he's a guy and I'm not. But even that old ploy didn't work.

Now I had to call a flatbed for a $100 ride home to Mr. Moon Lee's auto center.

Forty five minutes later, as I melted in the early afternoon sun, Chi Chi Rodriguez identical twin brother from another mother showed up. Except when he spoke on the phone to his girlfriend, he talked in Arabic, not Puerto Rican. Cosmic. Most of the trip I just pretended I understood his generally terrible English. Boy was he chatty. Nodding and saying Yes a lot helps. I don't think I agreed to do anything I didn't want to.

Mr. Moon Lee said I didn't need to tell him what was wrong, he would figure it out. He probably just didn't want to hear my theories.

So now I'm home, using my slick new keyboard that I just love because it is very thin, very light, very responsive and very cool. I hardly have to press the letters at all. They almost type themselves.

I also got to fill out one of those customer service questionnaires that the cashier at Micro Center stuck in my bag. "How did we do?" 

Not so good. Let me count the ways.

One final poop -- I got home and noticed that the fence lady neighbor is having the most god awful siding put up on her house.

The value of my home just dropped from a buck three eighty to seventy-five cents. The stuff they're using is almost as cheesy as putting up fake brick.

Yep, that fence of mine is coming all the way down. She can buy her own.

Wall Street v. Main Street

No one asked me to approve this bailout. I must have been blinded by the light when they said, "Uh, Mrs. Linklater, we need your help with a gazillion billion dollar loan. You don't mind, do you? It's just for a few years."

The Masters of Universe fell on their swords and the people who cater their parties and drive their cars and change the sheets on their hotel beds are supposed to answer the 911 emergency for the cash they need to keep them afloat. Why can't they just declare bankruptcy like the rest of us?

Last time this happened we had to rescue the savings and loan criminals. Now it's the investment bankers. Is anyone ever going to jail for making these messes? Anybody? Buehler?

Besides bailing out those greedy bastards, played by Michael Douglas again in the movie that's being optioned even as we speak, I am now the proud owner of eighty percent of the world's largest insurance company. That'll put food on my table and a roof over my head. In about 500 years.

Didn't the white guys in dark suits who run everything take a hard line early in the week? Something about not saving anybody else's butt. Yeah. That lasted for, what? Two days?  I always thought it was unAmerican to bail out the Wall Street Capitalists.

Of course, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were technically private companies on paper, but nobody minded that government takeover because they've been sleeping with the Feds for freaking ever. So why not just legalize the prostitution?

Meanwhile we small business people can just bend over and smile.

Ah, the irony, a Republican administration actually nationalizing a private enterprise. Creeping Socialism is having its finest hour. And no one has made a peep.

I'm so glad we could empty our pockets and help out with the payments on all those CEO's summer homes, winter homes, private schools, limousines and yachts.

Now here's what I want in return.

Since the interest on my mortgage has already paid for my house at least twice, maybe three times, I don't owe anybody another penny.

The interest on credit cards and car loans drops to one percent.

A CEO's salary is not to exceed 50 times more than the lowest paid fulltime employee in the business. Nowadays his salary averages between 300 and 500 times as much.

If a CEO's company loses money, the CEO loses money. I don't care how, just make it happen.

People who run a large company so far into the ground that the government has to bail them out or they have to declare bankruptcy automatically go straight to jail for five years.

No more two week vacations. From now on, everybody gets a month off.

All professional athletes must donate ten percent of their salaries to charity. And they have to do 100 hours community service every year even without being arrested. [I don't know how that one got in there, but that's one group that's been overlooked and underpunished.]

I could go on and on and on. Do you have any thoughts on how we could improve our personal financial situations?

Good Fences Make Good Neighbors. Bad Fences, Not So Much.

After I sent a letter to my neighbor asking her to call me if she thought I had her mail, instead of illegally rifling through my mailbox, I got a letter from the village yesterday. It said they had received a complaint about my fence falling down, which is a violation of some municipal code. I was commanded to fix the problem and told they would be by to make sure I complied.

I went out into my backyard. All the fences looked like they were standing. Even the oldest one that borders the mailbox lady's property. At least from what I could see. What were they talking about? So I walked that fence from the front of the yard to the back.

Way in the back corner there is a clump of trees and bushes. I walked along the fence until the bushes got so thick I couldn't go any farther. When I bent over and peered through the underbrush, I could see part of the fence lying on its side, completely hidden by all the foliage.

So I stopped by my neighbor's house last night to apologize for not knowing there was any part of my fence down. I said it was hidden by my bushes and I couldn't see it unless I walked all the way back, stooped over and looked for it.

I wondered out loud why she didn't just call me if she thought there was a problem. Ever since the mailbox episode she has had my phone number. Why did she have to call the village and complain [as if I didn't know payback when I smelled it.]

"The village wrote me a letter saying someone had complained."

"Well, we didn't know whose fence it was, yours or ours."

"You could have asked me."

"Well, uh. I never see you."

"You have my phone number."

'Yes, I do."

Yeah. Fark you too.

My turn to pull her chain. "Again, I apologize for not knowing the fence was down. I'll see if I can get the guys that mow my lawn to take out the broken section tomorrow.  [So it's no longer an eyesore for anybody who's sitting under the bushes in the back of the yard.]

"I can even get a price to take out the whole fence and put up a new one. In fact, maybe I'll just take the whole thing down so there's no fence." [A look of no no don't do that crossed her face.]

"You don't have to do that. The rest of the fence is just fine."

"We'll see. By the way, if I take out the old fence, you should know that it's over a foot off the property line into my yard. That's because I wasn't here when it was installed and they erred on the side of safety. So this time I will make sure the new one is back on the property line, which means you will lose some of your yard.  [And you can kiss those tomatoes goodbye.]

"Oh, really, there's no reason to replace it."

I am really in a mood to take the whole thing down so she has NO fence on that side of her yard. The cedar would make great firewood, since it hasn't been treated. Then she'll have to put up her own fence.

Also the village could have said there was a concern and remind me of the ordinance, instead of calling it a complaint and ordering me to do something or else. Unless my neighbor really did complain. I have put in a call to the regulatory bureaucrat who sent me the letter so I can find out.

On Monday I meet with the village to find out whether the new construction behind me has the required sewers dug into the back of the property for water runoff. Considering all the yards on my side of the block that flooded last weekend, I don't think so.

I can't wait to tete a tete with that neighbor.

What Else Is Joe Biden Hidin'?

I wish Joe Biden wasn't the Democratic vice presidential nominee. He's feels too old school. And he's got more warts on him than a blind date in a leper colony.

Aside from his unfortunate hairplugs, followed by being outed for plagiarism not once, but twice, he's been milking the death of his first wife and daughter in a traffic accident. Every time he tells the story, he says that the other driver was drunk.

Well, the other driver's family finally got tired of having their hard working father of seven wrongly accused. He was never charged with drunk driving by the cops and a high ranking law enforcement officer in Delaware said there was never any evidence that he had had anything to drink at all.

According to the man's family, he felt bad about the accident until the day he died.

In fact, people have come forward to say that the first Mrs. Biden is the one who caused the accident when she drove her car into the path of the oncoming tractor trailer. The one Joe Biden keeps saying was driven by a guy who was drunk. From the report I saw, it sounds like the guy did everything he could to avoid hittinig her, even to to point of flipping his cab to get out of her way.

If anyone was at fault, it would seem to be Mrs. Biden. I wonder what other stories Joe Biden has been making up? Hillary just looks better and better every day.

My Way Or The Highway, by Sarah Palin

You know what happens when you take away a woman's right to to have a baby or not? You get Sarah Palin.

Her life has been filled with unplanned, and arguably, unwanted pregnancies. And she wants you to have them too.

Let's start with her first one. The one she used to get Todd Palin to marry her.

Relying heavily on her fundamentalist Christian beliefs about contraception and abortion, but choosing to ignore it's warnings about fornication and promiscuity, I believe the enterprising Sarah accidentally got pregnant on purpose to manipulate Todd into matrimony.

Think about it. After all, this was in 1988 not 1958. Forcing a man into marriage with a pregnancy is a vestige of passive aggressive female behavior from a time when unmarried, pregnant women were shamed by society and often abandoned with no other legal way out. Fortunately, for men as well as women, pregnancy used as a tool for blackmail has been made virtually obsolete by easy access to a plethora of contraceptives and Roe v. Wade.

However, in 1988 Sarah was already 24. Old by sled dog standards. She and Todd had been dating since high school. And she was probably tired of waiting for him to step up to the plate.

If this had been the fifties instead of the eighties, they most likely would have been married already, since that was the usual trade off for a horny guy who wanted sex from his girlfriend.  However, unlike the fifties, Todd was no doubt enjoying a major perk of the women's movement that men have embraced with unabashed enthusiasm -- sex without responsibility. Marriage? I got my sex. I don't need no stinkin' marriage!

Meanwhile, Miss Sarah had a plan. As an Alaskan outdoorsman, I doubt that Todd worried about contraception. By all indications Sarah Barracuda is the type of woman who would not relinquish that responsibility to a guy anyway. To feign the appearance of an unplanned pregnancy, women on the pill might skip a few pills. Other women might poke holes in their diaphragms. Count the days wrong. Whatever. Regardless, Sarah obviously knew she was pregnant very early, well within the first few weeks. She had a safe, legal choice for ending the pregnancy. But her religion, which she apparently ignores when it suits her, took any decision to end the pregnancy off the table. Fortunately, having no choice but marriage suited Sarah's purposes.

So they eloped. and an accidental baby was born less than eight months later.

If the first pregnancy was unplanned, but useful, her most recent pregnancy was evidently unwanted.  

After forty, the chance of a Down Syndrome baby increases to 50%. At 13 weeks, 43 year old Sarah learned her fetus had Down Syndrome. I think it would be safe to say that she didn't think it would happen to her, not with four healthy children. From all accounts Sarah was very conflicted by the news. She has said her inner turmoil drove her to hide her pregnancy as long as possible. She was in denial. Obviously, she couldn't process having a Down Syndrome child. To avoid talking about it, she didn't tell the press or her staff that she was pregnant. She didn't even tell her own children about its handicap until the baby was born.

Imagine what it's like to know you have a physically and mentally impaired fetus early in pregnancy and you have no choice but to carry it to term. Sarah Palin let her religion dictate that decision. Fortunately, her religion cannot and should not dictate the law of the land, so I could have and would have chosen an abortion.

Perhaps, until its birth, she was hoping that, by some miracle, she would lose the baby naturally. The best evidence of this is that she flew to Texas to make a speech at the end of her third trimester, against airline regulations and traditional medical advice. She flew again after the speech, when she was leaking amniotic fluid, which could have caused the death of her baby. Again this is the kind of passive aggressive behavior that women practice when put in the untenable position of not having a choice.

The first baby was unplanned. The second was unwanted. The third was her daughter's, both unplanned and unwanted.  

Barack Obama, in his convention speech, said that we may not agree on abortion, but we can agree that there are too many unwanted teen pregnancies.

Despite her history of unplanned and unwanted pregnancies, Sarah Palin said in her interview with Charlie Gibson that there are too many abortions. I guess it's easier for Sarah to ban abortions than teach sex education. By the way, Sarah, there are far more unwanted pregnancies than unwanted abortions.

Alaska's favorite GILF says she would only approve of abortion to save the life of the mother. At what point do you step in to save the life of a teenage mother? When her knowledge of sex is limited to an abstinence only education and she's trying to hold off a testosterone poisoned boyfriend? When she gets pregnant anyway and has to leave school and get a job? When the baby is born and she has to find work as a single parent without having a high school diploma? When she spends the rest of her life raising a child alone and struggling to make ends meet? An abortion can save a teen mother and an innocent child from a depressing, empty life of low self esteem, low wages, and low expectations.

But Sarah's answer to an unplanned, unwanted teen pregnancy isn't abortion; it isn't even adoption; it's marriage. Instead of saving the life of her daughter so she can grow up and realize her potential, finish her education, and become a productive member of society, her mother would ask her daughter to have a baby when she's only eighteen and marry the reluctant father of the child, a high school jock who has already stated publicly that he doesn't want kids.

Three unwanted pregnancies. Two guys roped into marriage, One handicapped infant.

Sarah Palin would argue that she had no other choice.

That's why she's no choice of mine.

Wet Weekend

Have I mentioned the McMansions that have been built in my neighborhood? First they knock down a three or four bedroom two story house from the fifties or sixties. Then they build something twice as big. I think the village has mandated that all new construction must be ugly. The builders are required to use lots of weird looking brick, add a funny turret accessory, and be sure there's a giant cyrstal chandelier hanging in the ginormous window over the front door.

That's pretty much what got built on the lot behind me last year. Starting Friday, we got "Iked" over the weekend. My yard looks like Lake Michigan. I walked out back and the water is a foot deep in the shallow places.

That's because the ugly new house behind me is not only so large that there's virtually no yard, plus it's built on a hill, so all the water comes running my way, because it no longer has anywhere else to go.

In thirty years I have NEVER had this much water in my back yard.  Even during the floods of '82 and '87, which were almost as bad, there was just a six inch deep fish pond sized puddle in the low spot. Today my entire yard is under water.

More importantly, in the old days, the water used to drain within 24 hours. This stuff isn't going any place for a long time.

Mosquitos anyone?


P.S. The water is all gone -- it drained very quickly.  Phew.

Vice Presidents for Dummies

This is not going to start out as a rant about how uneducated Sarah Palin is or how we've dumbed down the presidency these last eight years. That's for later.

This is going to start with grass roots stupidity. Close to home stuff. The kind you can get with a phone call.

This morning I called American Airlines to use some of my mileage to get a free ride to Los Angeles in a few weeks.

I was told by the Advantage Services dummy that a big chunk of my mileage had expired because there hasn't been any activity on my account for eighteen months. With a flip of a switch, thousands of miles went hasta la bye bye at the end of August.

Wait a minute. How could that happen?

Well, sometimes these things happen.

No they don't. I just flew to New Jersey in August. On one of your crappy planes.

Do you recall the dates?

Yes, I left on a Thursday, I believe it was the 7th. I came back on the 25th, which was a Monday.

I'm sorry, m'am, but the 7th was a Sunday.

No it wasn't.

Yes it was. I have a calendar right in front of me.

Well, I don't. But I remember the 8th was on a Friday because my daughter moved that day. And it's my sister's birthday. And my father died on the 8th. The 8th was a Friday. So, the seventh was on Thursday.

I'm sorry m'am, but that's just not correct. I'm looking at the calendar right here on my computer --

For 2008?

Of course, for 2008.

You're sure it's 2008?

Absolutely.

Well, I'm not insane. I just went on that trip. I know when I left. Okay, check your stupid calendar to see what date Labor Day fell on this year. Because I know it was on the first of September.  You can count back from today.

SILENCE.

MORE SILENCE.

EVEN MORE SILENCE.

Hello?

Uh. . .let me restart my computer here, I think there is something wrong with the calendar I was looking at.

No [bleeping] shit.

Uh, sorry about that. You know, sometimes I just want to throw this computer out the window.

Not yet, please. First check to see if you have me on my flights to New Jersey last month, so I can get my miles back.

Yes, I found them both.

Now. How come my mileage wasn't posted. That's part of the reason I pay extra for a travel agent.

Sometimes mileage doesn’t get posted. Okay, your mileage from August has been posted. But you'll have to wait 24 hours for your missing mileage to be reinstated.

Yeah, thanks.

[NEXT PHONE CALL]
Hello, travel agent that I pay a premium to so you won't screw things up?

Hi, how 's everything?

American just dumped a bunch of my miles for inactivity. They informed me that nothing had been posted to my Advantage account for eighteen months. I thought you took care of that stuff every time I flew. This never used to be a problem.

Well, let's see. Hmmmm. I don't seem to have your United or your American frequent travel numbers in here.

[First: I've used this travel agent for more than twenty years. She always USED to have my frequent flier numbers. Where the fark did they go? Second: Why didn't she ask me for them if she didn't see them when I made the reservation? Dummy.]

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

Which is a natural segue to the dumbing down of the vice-presidency. [There's no need to worry about the presidency. He's already dumbed that down about as low as itcan go. Thanks to Dubya, the C students of the world can hope for a bright tomorrow. Just look at McCain. He barely got out of Annapolis.]

But a stupid vice-president, too? Surely, something ought to be sacred. Hasn't it been our country's dirty little secret that Cheney's the one who makes Bushie's mouth move? He's the brains of the past eight years, along with Karl Rove, before he had to excuse himself. They just let GW take all the credit. Oh, wait a minute. If I'm not mistaken, Cheney flunked out of school.

So I guess Sarah Palin is just continuing a long and proud Republican tradition of uninformed, undereducated people on the Republican ticket. Not that I think someone who wants to teach creationism in the schools is stupid. Or that abstinence-only sex education is stupid. Or that shooting wolves from helicopters with scopes is stupid. Or that denying the existence of global warming is stupid. Or that charging women who have been raped for the cost of the rape kit is stupid. Or that nobody will notice when you send your pregnant, unwed teenage daughter out of town to your sister's so she won't embarrass the family is stupid. [Actually, that was hilarious.] Or that we can't do the math between the time you got married and the time you had your baby less than eight months later. And named him after a sport, Track. Stupid.

Clearly Sarah Palin is the ideal modern Republican vice-presidential choice. She has elevated dumb and dumber to new heights. And clueless Americans, most of them children who should have been left behind, are clamoring for more.

Is it so wrong to want someone for vice president who graduated from a distinguished university with an advanced degree? Or at least good grades? Who has been to another country besides Canada? Who has read something besides the Bible? Who understands more about warfare than how to strip and clean a rifle? Who has done more for wildlife than kill and eat a moose? Who knows how to separate church and state?

I know. I should think about the upside. If Sarah Palin becomes vice president, at least, for awhile, she will no longer be in a position to cause more destruction in Alaska.

And that’s a good thing.

And Now For Something Completely Different

[Before I share this little story, Joe Biden was talking to some crowd exhorting them to embrace the Obama/Biden ticket, when he told them that Hillary would make a great vice president. Then he said that she probably would have been a better choice than he. Can we have a do-over?]


Don is a friend of mine. I've known him since the summer of 1958. I was a tall, skinny fourteen year old who used to loiter around the lifeguard stand at the beach in my town. He was one of the lifeguards, a former member of our high school swim team and soon to be a freshman at Duke. All summer he put up with me like an older brother with a pesky little sister. Or a clumsy St. Bernard puppy.

I helped my own cause by bringing him homemade chocolate chips and pining for one of the other lifeguards. Except for one disastrous attempt at having a date, years later, we have always been good friends.

One of the reasons I applied to Duke was because Don went there. My first day on campus I saw him on the Quad and he introduced me to Danny, one of his fraternity brothers. I was immediately smitten. Danny had played football back home for our biggest high school rival, Evanston, a team which had beaten us seven years in a row. Big and athletic, he looked like he could take on our team by himself. He had gone to Duke to play ball, but he got hurt so he decided to get an education. Our first date was a boring poetry reading by a popular English professor who, I realized later, had as big a crush on Danny as I did.

Over the next three years, at Duke and later at Northwestern, I wasted a lot of time going out with him. I was even pinned to someone else for a year or so, but when that broke up I went back to Danny. Not that he was ever my boyfriend. I just couldn't get him out of my system.

When I transferred to Northwestern he had already graduated from Duke and was living back home in Evanston, where NU is located. One day he called my sorority house to talk to someone else, but I happened to answer the phone. Instead of just taking his message, he wanted to keep talking. That's because I sounded so seductive. How do I know this?

I should probably mention that I suffered from really bad cramps for years, so my doctor had prescribed a painkiller that had codeine in it. If you've ever talked to someone who is high on dope you will know why I sounded like one of those soothing voices at the other end of a 900 number -- in sharp contrast to my normally raucous, fast-talking, schtick-performing self.

Naturally, enhanced by pharmaceuticals, my voice was so appealing that Danny asked me out again.

I actually laughed when I got off the phone, knowing how disappointed he was going to be when I showed up behaving like good old wacko me on our date.

How bad did I want to keep going out with this guy? That summer he asked me to a concert when I was selling clothes at Marshall Field's. The morning of the concert, someone had brought brownies to work to celebrate a birthday. They were delicious. In fact, I had about four of them before 9:30 in the morning.  For some reason, the time of day, or the rich chocolate frosting, they sat in my stomach like a brick. When I got home after work, feeling awful, the last thing I wanted to do was go on a date. But it was Danny. So I upchucked the undigested treats -- seriously, they practically came up whole -- swallowed some strong mouthwash and I was good to go.

Fast forward to 1978, more than a decade later.

I ran into Danny on the street, following my divorce.  It turned out we had both been married for the same length of time and our divorces were finalized in the same month.

That was a good enough reason for him to ask me out. And for me to accept. After our second date, he called me up and asked me to help him get a housekeeper for his son. I suggested that he look in the newspaper under household help. No. He wanted me to do it since he considered that a woman's job.

Hello?  I declined. Then he asked me to go out that night. I said I had plans with my girlfriends. He said, tell them you're busy.

Apparently he missed the memo. Times had changed and he hadn't. I suddenly saw him for the sexist pig he had been all this time. You never know what will transpire to finally shut down those residual longings for someone who was poisonous from day one. But I was finally done with him.

Meanwhile, Don marries the former wife of my college roommate's husband's best friend. I just had to throw that in.

About ten years ago I called Don to catch up on stuff. We hadn't talked in years. He laughed and said, "Guess who I talked to today?"  I had no idea. "Danny."  Don hadn't talked to him in years either and strangely, both of us called him on the same day. O-o-o-o-o-o, cosmic.

A couple of nights ago I called Don to catch up again. We keep saying we're going to get together and we never do it. He wasn't home. I left a message, "It's me, Mrs. Linklater. You know this means you're probably going to hear from Danny, too." 

I was right, only this time it wasn't a phone call.

I met a couple of people at a new Starbuck's early yesterday, the morning after calling Don. I have never been to that particular one before. We were sitting outside talking bidness when I looked up and there was Danny pressing buttons on his cellphone as he was heading inside. Trying to reach Don perhaps? More cosmic-ness.

He didn't see me. Phew. Except for having gray hair he looked exactly the same. For once I was glad that I don't  look at all ike I used to.

Last night I called Don again. He laughed and said Danny hadn't called him yet. I said he didn't have to, because this time, after not seeing him for years, there had actually been a sighting.

Does this mean that every time I contact Don we get stuck with Danny too? What's going to happen if Don and I actually get together for dinner or something? Will Danny be sitting at the next table? Will he be our server? Will he valet park our cars?

Meanwhile, should I call Oprah?

Come On Hillary, Time to Play Hard Ball

Anna Quindlen dissected the issues surrounding Sarah Palin better than I ever could in this week's Newsweek. 

http://www.newsweek.com/id/157543

Quindlen has written the blueprint for the speech Hillary should have given as soon as Palin was nominated. But, no-o-o, she's suddenly Mrs. Nice Guy. For some misguided reason, she is not going on the attack while the window of opportunity is still wide open.

Why not? Did I mention that Obama has some of the very same people who engineered the last two incompetent attempts to take the White House? Why these eunuchs have jobs at all is beyond me.

People keep saying not to worry about the post convention blip. Why not? Have you been on Mars for the last two presidential elections?

If the Dems' big guns don't start playing like it's the bottom of the ninth with two outs, the bases loaded, and a full count, we might as well pack it in.

What If Todd Becomes First Lady?

Okay, worst case scenario -- McCain gets elected president and, heaven help us, dies in office. Suddenly Sarah Palin has to move the double wide out of the Rose Garden and into the White House.

Deciding where to hang the dead moose and park the boat trailer, not to mention keeping track of five kids, a [self-proclaimed] redneck hockey player, and a grandchild will not be easy.

But her biggest problem will be figuring out what to do with her hubba bubba, Todd, Alaska’s First Dude [no, really, that’s what they call him].

Left to his own devices, there’s only so much reindeer sausage and beer a guy can consume before one day she finds him working on his snowmobile in the Lincoln Bedroom.   

In case you missed the last couple of hundred years, the First Spouse has traditionally been a female, This was fortunate, since that meant there would be someone gender appropriate available to choose drapes, select silverware, prepare menus, and make sure there were no dust fuzzies in the front hall.

I believe these previously all-female tasks are spelled out in the Declaration of Independence, right after “We hold these truths to be self-evident. . .”  Remember, in 1776, women were considered their husbands’ property, like slaves, so I’m sure it never occurred to our founding fathers that a First Lady would ever be a First Laddie, to borrow from Bill Clinton.

In order to keep their brains from dissolving into oatmeal, First Ladies also choose a pet project that they champion during their husbands’ presidencies. For example, Laura Bush was a librarian, so it was natural for her to choose a project that would encourage children to read and get their educations.  

John McCain’s wife, Cindy, might travel the country visiting nursing homes to espouse federally funded Botox treatments for the elderly. Or she could just hand out free beer to the homeless.

But what’s Todd going to do if his wife is suddenly thrust into the presidency? Teach inner city kids how to shoot wolves and bears from the presidential helicopter? Show families who have lost their homes how to freeze enough caribou to get them through the winter?  Invite union steelworkers to the White House for a light repast of cold cucumber soup and a filet of poached salmon he caught himself?

Maybe he could start a support group for dads who have pregnant teenage daughters. The guys could park their pick ups on the South Lawn and use the Washington Monument for target practice, while they talk about shooting the boys who knocked their girls up. Then fire up the grills and tailgate.

Anything is possible. McCain made sure of that.

It's Gonna Get Ugly

I consider myself an independent, but I've been voting Democratic in national elections for the past sixteen years. This week I've talked to four other "independents" who saw Sarah Palin's speech the other night. They all sent checks to Obama afterward.

One guy who spent eight years in Houston and thinks that gives him a unique view of Ms. Palin in Alaska called her and her family "trailer trash." Another guy I know claimed he was so upset by Palin's speech that he got drunk. Of course, that may have just been another excuse to break out the single malt.  

In 2004 I heard the same kind of disgruntled talk from Republicans who hated Bush. They were certain the Bush years were over. But they weren't. The problem was all that anger at the administration, from people who were usually lockstep conservatives, didn't translate into votes for Democrats. It's easy to blame Nader, but I'm not sure any of those people who whined about Bush really voted. They think they're so important they probably didn't realize you actually have to do something instead of just calling Bush an asshead. Sometimes these masters of the universe types forget that you can't delegate everything. "Vote? I'll have my assistant take care of that."

After assuming incorrectly that Bush would be gone, the disgruntled Republicans watched from the safety of their McMansions as the Democrats did quite well for themselves in the 2006 midterm elections. Amazing how successful Dems can be when Ralph Nader isn't a distraction.

All those newly minted Democrats got to Washington with a mandate to end the war and change the status quo. Only from where I sit, they have spent the last two years doing absolutely NOTHING, led by the Queen of Bupkus, Nancy Pelosi, who is useless.

This year, more than ever, everything is upside down. Obama, who has an ivy league education, has been called an elitist by the Republicans. I didn't think minorities could do that. Meanwhile the Republican vice presidential nominee is a working mom, married to a union steelworker, both groups normally considered Democrats where I come from. Whatever happened to the good old days, when Democrats were the party of empathetic, understanding, working people with family values and the Republicans were rich bastards.

The people I talk to are convinced there's no way the Republicans can win this election. Based on what? Wishful thinking? Did they watch the conventions? The GOP completely crushed any Democratic momentum following Obama's speech, by announcing, the very next day, that Sarah Palin was McCain's choice for VP. Barack who? There has been nothing else but Sarah Palin on the news ever since. Plus she gave a great speech. And last night, McCain looked positively lifelike while he gave his.

Psychologically, I feel like I'm backing someone who can't win. People gravitate to winners. And I'm betting Obama lost a big chunk of undecided voters after the last couple of nights of excellent Republican speechifying. I hope that four years from now at the next conventions, the Democrats go last. How is that decided anyway? A flip of the coin?

Several pundits called McCain's decision to have a female running mate his Hail Mary pass. Unless someone's got video of Sarah Palin dancing on a pole somewhere, he scored a touchdown that put them in the lead by a couple of points.

My concern is that I'm not sure there's enough time left during the next sixty days for Obama to return the kickoff and score his own touchdown to win the game.

Unless that pole dancing video shows up.

Good Taste Is My Middle Name

Have you seen the picture of Sarah Palin standing in a American flag bikini holding an assault rifle? Yeah, it's fake. But I could have posted it here anyway and I didn't. So occasionally I can show some restraint.

I also have another letter from someone claiming to know Sarah, who supposedly lives in her hometown in Alaska. She says a lot of interesting things -- way more than the other letter I posted. How Sarah, when she was elected mayor, came in and fired everyone, then replaced those people with people who had no idea what they were doing. How Sarah tried to have the town librarian fired because she wouldn't listen to Sarah and take certain books off the shelves. Apparently the woman who wrote the letter led the group who forced Sarah to back off. So no love lost. The woman also left her full name, email, and phone number. And begged everybody not to post her letter in a blog so she wouldn't get the crazy people contacting her. I have been trying to confirm that the woman is real.

I'll let you know.

Here's the link to the letter. The woman, Anne Kilkenny, was vetted by Snopes. She originally wrote the letter to 40 friends right after Sarah Palin's nomination. It's worth reading.

Good Job Sarah

Nice work, Governor. Ignoring the B.S. factor inherent in any convention speech, she earned a boatload of style points. I hope McCain can be half as good. For his sake. I also wish there were some way for Hillary to debate her. She wiped the floor with the other Dems during their debates. It would be fun to watch the trainwreck.

Levi Johnston, Bristol's betrothed, cleaned up good. I see he no longer sports a mullet.

What Was She Thinking?

Here's what I know for sure about Sarah Palin -- she is very ambitious. With a special needs baby and an unwed pregnant daughter for starters, she could have said no to McCain.

One person's ambition can be costly to a family. Everyone's needs go on hold in the service of meeting those goals.

It seems like Sarah Palin is all about Sarah Palin. Most of the time when you've got kids, the first thing you give up is a big piece of yourself in support of your children's emotional growth. But it seems like she has asked her kids to support her success instead.

I'm not saying she's cruel or thoughtless. Just that Moms are so key to children that when she can't be there, something's bound to give.

As much as people try to separate her teenage daughter's pregnancy from any failing on Ms. Palin's part, a family is a single entity with many parts, all of which depend on the others. Absent care and attention, a wheel has to squeak to get greased.

Anyone who has tried to have a career while raising children knows the toll it takes on our relationships with them. There just isn't enough time to give each one all the intimate Mom Moments they need. It's a fallacy to think that kids only need quality time; they need face time more -- the ability to look up whenever they want and just see that you're there.

The more children you have the more you need to be around, although older daughters can nurture the younger ones and older boys can help with fathering if there's no father in the picture.

But it's one thing to have a nine to five job that gets you home for dinner. It's another thing to be a governor and not be home with regularity. Kids thrive on consistency. Mom is the emotional heart of a family. If she's a public servant her kids' needs get postponed, delayed, and deferred in the performance of her duties.

The children who get the short end of the stick in this scenario are the older ones, who are thrown into the role and responsibilities of parenting when they still need parenting themselves.

What I find most interesting about Bristol Palin is that it seems like she got pregnant around the same time her little brother was born. He's five months old. She's five months pregnant. I'm sure getting pregnant wasn't a conscious decision, but the coincidence and the reason for it make for a good ponder.

Mom has spent a lot of time in the spotlight. It's not her fault, but the demands of her job mean she doesn't have much time to appreciate what her children are doing to shine for her. The Look At Me Mom factor is an important part of any kid's llife.

Given the family's strict abstinence-only stance on birth control and pro-life position on abortion, what better way is there for a normally obedient young girl to say "I'm not your babysitter anymore" than to do something permanent and irreversible.

All for want of time with her mom. And time to be a kid. Time so she could ask the dumb questions that come up when you're just driving in the car or siting around after dinner. Time to not be responsible for anyone but herself. Time to finally get to her questions about boys. How to keep them coming around. How to keep them from misbehaving.

I'll be curious to see if Bristol really does marry Lecherous Levi or not. He seems like a brainless hunk. No matter what we're being told, I wonder if she will go along with the spin meisters and set a date for her wedding. Then, when things cool down, dump him. 

Bristol may have to tell her mom that she has ambitions of her own.

Speaking of Rednecks

Apparently Bristol's betrothed, Levi "I'm a f------g redneck" Johnson or Johnston [depending on your source], states on his expletive filled Facebook page that he doesn't want kids. I wonder how much longer that page will be up.

This just gets better and better.

Despite his protestations about no kids, Levi is reportedly joining the mother of his child and her family at the RNC shortly. Maybe when his future mother-in-law gives her speech, we can get a glimpse of him sitting with his bride-to-be. I give that shotgun marriage enough time to provide the baby with a name, but its slacker father will be toast before a year is up, assuming Bristol hasn't kicked him out before then.  So much for abstinence only and family values.

Maybe this evening the Republican vice presidential nominee will use her greatly anticipated speech to address something Barack Obama said the other night. "We may not agree about abortion, but we can agree that something needs to be done about teen pregnancies." 

Especially when kids think they won't get pregnant the first time they do it.  Boy, wouldn't it be great to get a free pass? Except you wouldn't want it for the first time you ever had sex --  you'd like to save it for when you knew what you were doing. Or found someone who could show you.

One of the problems trying to educate kids about hormone poisoning is that they have their own unique way of absorbing information. Their brains are still made of pudding, don't forget. It's risky explaining stuff. You really can't tell them anything because you have no idea how they will hear it.

I remember a college girl [not my kid] who told me she wouldn't get pregnant as long as she waited until fourteen days after her period started. She said I had taught her that. WTF? I once told her that women ovulated fourteen days BEFORE their periods. However, my point was [I thought] that counting fourteen days AFTER your period starts wouldn't work to prevent pregnancy. Ask a Catholic. Apparently that's not what she heard.

Maybe that's why nobody wants to talk to kids about sex. You mess them up even when you don't mean to. 

We should probably require a license to "do it." Leave it all to the bureaucrats. Give the kids a book with diagrams to memorize. Then, after passing the written test, a qualified examiner would take themout for a test drive. Just kidding. But a written test to earn a license to have sex couldn't hurt. Part of getting it renewed every three years would be a test for STDs. And to check how many points they had accumulated for bad rides.

There would have to be another license for having babies. This one would require twelve weeks in a simulator that included three weeks of morning sickness followed by nine weeks of wearing a fat suit for the women. The guys get to spend a month waking up to the sound of a crying baby every two hours. And no sex of any kind for the entire time. At the end there would be a final exam that included teaching a kid how to ride a bike and proper behavior at t-ball games.

Tonight will be interesting.  I'll be curious to see how many times Sarah Palin has the balls to invoke parallels to Hillary. The only thing they have in common is that they're both female.

Sarah Palin Is A Redneck?

I do not personally know the writer of this letter. A friend of mine who went to Harvard forwarded it to me. I mention his school so you know he is smart and very liberal.  [Remo is right -- Sarah Palin is terrifying to anyone with a brain -- I mean left of center.]

Dear Classmates -

As an Alaskan, I am writing to give all of you some information on Sarah Palin, Senator McCain's choice for VP. As an Alaska voter, I know more than most of you about her and, frankly, I am horrified that he picked her.

The most accurate description of her is red neck. Her husband works in the oil fields of Prudhoe Bay and races snow mobiles. She is a life time member of the NRA and has worked tirelessly to allow indiscriminate hunting of wildlife in Alaska, particularly wolves and bears. She has spent millions of Alaska state dollars on aerial hunting of these predators from helicopters and airplanes, dollars that should have been spent, for example, on Alask a's failing school system.We have the lowest rate of high school graduation in the country. Not all of you may think aerial predator hunting is so bad, but how anyone (other than Alaska wolf-haters, of which there are many, most without teeth), could think this use of funds is appropriate is beyond me. If you want to know more about the aerial hunting travesty, let me know and I will send some links to informative web sites.

She has been a strong supporter of increased use of fossil fuels, yet the McCain campaign has the nerve to say she has "green" policies. The only thing green about Sarah Palin is her lack of experience. She has consistently supported drilling in ANWR, use of coal-burning power plants (as I write this, a new coal plant is being built in her home town of Wasilla), strip mining, and almost anything else that will unnecessarily exploit the diminishing resources of Alaska and destroy its environment.

Prior to her one year as governor of Alaska, she was mayor of Wasilla,a small red neck town outside Anchorage.The average maximum education level of parents of junior high school kids in Wasilla is 10th grade. Unfortunately, I have to go to Wasilla every week to get groceries and other supplies, so I have continual contact with the people who put Palin in office in the first place. I know what I'm talking about. These people don't have a concept of the world around them or of the serious issues facing the US. Furthermore, they don't care. So long as they can go out and hunt their moose every fall, kill wolves and bears and drive their snow mobiles and ATVs through every corner of the wilderness, they're happy. I wish I were exaggerating.

Sarah Palin is currently involved in a political corruption scandal.
She fired an individual in law enforcement here because she didn't like how he treated one of her relatives during a divorce. The man's performance and ability weren't considered; it was a totally personal firing and is currently under investigation. [NOTE: FROM MRS. L -- THIS ISN'T ENTIRELY CORRECT. The official she fired had refused to fire a law enforcement officer and former  Palin in-law who had threatened her family. Either way, she's being investigated for abuse of power.]

While the issue isn't close to the scandal of Ted Steven's corruption, it shows that Palin isn't "squeaky clean" and causes me to think there may be more issues that could come to light. Clearly McCain doesn't care.

When you line Palin up with Biden, the comparison would be laughable if it weren't so serious. Sarah Palin knows nothing of economics (admittedly a weak area for McCain), or of international affairs, knows nothing of national government, Social Security, unemployment, health care systems - you name it. The idea of her meeting with heads of foreign governments around the world truly frightens me.

In an increasingly dangerous world, with the economy in shambles in the US, Sarah Palin is uniquely UNqualified to be vice president. John McCain is not a young man. Should something happen to him such that the vice president had to step in, it would destroy our country and possibly the world to have someone as inexperienced and inappropriate as Sarah Palin. The choice of Palin is a cheap shot by McCain to try to get Hillary supporters to vote for him. when McCain introduced her today, Palin had the nerve to compare herself with Hillary and
Geraldine Ferraro. Sarah Palin, you are no Hillary Clinton.

To those of you who, like me, supported Hilary and were upset that she did not get the nomination, please don't think that Sarah Palin is a worthy substitute. If you supported Hillary, regardless of what you think the media and the democratic party may have done to undermine her campaign, the person to support now is Obama, not Sarah Palin. To those of you who are independent or undecided, don't let the choice of Palin sway you in favor of McCain. Choosing her shows how unqualified McCain is to be president. To those of you who are conservative, I guess you have no choice for president. But please try to see how the poor choice of Palin tells us a great deal about McCain's judgment.

While the political posturing inherent in the choice of Palin is
obvious, the more serious issue is the fact that the VP is, literally,
a heartbeat away from the presidency. Sarah Palin is totally and
unequivocally unqualified to be vice president, let alone president.

I know this is a lengthy and emotional email, but the stakes are high. I thought it might help for all of you, regardless of political
affiliation, to know something about Palin from someone who has to live with her administration in Alaska on a daily basis.

J.S.


The internet blogs forced the Palins to reveal that their abstinence-only raised daughter got knocked up. Even though kids should be off limits to the media, a child whose parents hold such conversative views is going to get outed. Too bad Cheney's daughter wasn't given a chance to be heard back in 2000.

This Palin nomination fallout -- by "evil" liberal internet bloggers -- feels like it's building up a nice head of steam. The media keep asking the McCain campaign how well she was vetted. Wouldn't it be great if she had to step down? 

I can hope, can't I?

UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE

Here's the latest.

GOP VP Candidate Palin's Daughter Is Pregnant

17-year-old Bristol to keep the child and marry the father

updated 12:07 p.m. ET Sept. 1, 2008

ST. PAUL - The 17-year-old daughter of Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin is pregnant, Palin said Monday in an announcement intended to knock down rumors by liberal bloggers that Palin faked her own pregnancy to cover up for her child.

Yay for liberal  bloggers.

Sarah Palin's Mother-In-Law Likes Obama

Faye Palin, Sarah's blond, extremely Caucasian looking mother-in-law got a taste of fifteen minutes of fame today. She was on TV [try YouTube] because she doesn't know yet whether she will be voting for Obama/Biden or McCain and the mother of her four or five grandchildren.

I mention Faye's looks because her son is supposed to be an Inuit [Eskimo], and I've seen no sign of any resemblance to Alaska's native people in either mother or son. On the other hand, we haven't met Mr. Palin's dad. As a sometime commercial fisherman [and a higher paying union steelworker for BP] Sarah's hubba bubba may be claiming Inuit ancestry, however tenuous, so he can take advantage of the extensive fishing rights accorded to native peoples and not white folks.

While we're talking about Sarah's family, I should mention that she emphatically spoke out against abortion a couple of years ago, saying that even if her daughter were raped and impregnated, she wouldn't support it.

Luckily Hillary's daughter wouldn't suffer the same fate. Her mother supports Chelsea's right to choose what's best for her -- either to carry the baby to term or opt for ending the pregnancy. Denying women the right to choose will always be a dealbreaker for me.

And anyone who thinks the 18,000,000 women who voted for Hillary would vote for Sarah Palin just because she's a female could only be a man.

Is Sarah Palin a Mom or a Grandmom?

Not one to start rumors [MUCH], but always one to spread them, Mrs. Linklater has just learned that there are people who think that Ms. Palin isn't a new mom, she's a new GRANDMOM. Could this baby belong to her older daughter? Although Down Syndrome is usually seen in older moms because the eggs go bad, young moms can be affected too.

Apparently the Grandma rumor has been circling around the internet since spring.

If you want to look into this, check out the Daily Kos or any number of other sources yourself. There's even an amusing timeline of the gov's arrival at the hospital in Alaska to have the baby, more than thirteen hours after her water broke while she was giving a speech in Texas.

I'm not doing any links. That way I'm still a virgin.

Apparently NO ONE on her staff could believe she was seven months pregnant when she first made her announcement. They were dumbfounded. Seven months is very hard to hide. So is six months. In fact, most women have a hard time hiding five months, especially when they are slim and trim. I was tall and skinny and could still wear a belt at 4 1/2 months, but at five months I just let it all hang out.

Governor Palin is also a big-time runner [who kept on running] so it's not like she was hiding a kid in folds of fat.

But here's the best part -- what's with the LONG airplane flight she took when she was almost eight months pregnant -- after her water broke? She was dripping amniotic fluid on a cross country plane trip.

Hello?!  First of all, there are rules against flying that late in pregnancy. Especially at her age and when you're on your fifth kid. I'm sure there are even more rules when your water breaks, especially with a special needs baby. 

No way any of that happens without the airlines having you sign releases letting them off the hook -- especially with a Down Syndrome baby who might have heart and lung defects that affect his or her birth.

So far there's no evidence that anybody at the airline had a clue she was p.g.

Also there's no way you go flying with your water dripping without your doctor making you sign releases either.

The baby was also about a month earlly, something that often happens to young mothers.  

I love this stuff.

P.S. I just had another notion. If, in fact, Sarah Palin really was pregnant, did she deliberately keep her weight down, continue to run, and then endanger the baby's life by flying after her water broke ON PURPOSE?  Was her irresponsible behavior an attempt to terminate his life "naturally"?

Inquiring minds want to know if Sarah Palin is a loose cannon. Like John McCain.

My Wacky Wacky Neighbors

I was walking toward my front door when I saw my neighbor, Ellie, on her driveway and said "hello."  She was checking out her lawn sprinkler, since we haven't had much water this summer and the last few weeks have been especially dry.

"Oh, by the way," she said, "If you see me going through your mailbox, don't worry about it."

WTF?

Apparently she got her neighbor Pam's mail misdelivered to her house the other day. When she returned the mail to Pam, Ellie wondered where her own mail might be.

At that point Pam told her to go through the mail in Mrs. Linklater's mailbox. Who put her in charge?

I stopped Ellie and told her that it was not okay for Pam to make that suggestion.

I also told her that -- in the past -- when I have found her mail mixed in with mine, I always returned it to her house. She didn't know about that. Mainly because I never told her what I did.

To make sure I had the law on my side before I got really pissed off that someone rifled through my stuff, I checked with one of my crack lawyer bros.

It turns out that one of them used to work for a US Attorney. Cool.  Apparently entering someone else's mailbox is, in fact, considered a crime.

I was thrilled. Unfortunately, none of the crimes is punishable by death.

Regardless, some of the crimes that may have been committed by my stupid neighbor going through my mail include tampering, criminal and civil trespass, breaking and entering, burglary [depending on the time of day] and even assault, if I happened to be at home at the time.

So I drafted a letter with my phone number so my neighbor could call me when she thinks I may be in possession of her mail. But  I made sure she would never think about opening my mailbox and reviewing what's inside -- ever again. Or I'd kill her.

Actually I was very polite and used lots of pleases and thank yous. My letter was filled with a bunch of the usual pretend polite stuff you like to include in the first letter you write to a neighbor, when they pull a bonehead move like she did.

I did point out however, as nicely as I could, that she had committed a crime and ticked off the list of misdemeanors and felonies she could be charged with.

I also made sure she knew that this information had come from a lawyer. I finished with a reminder that misdelivered mail is no excuse for anyone to go through my Chico's catalogs. 

But in a nice way.

The letter to my busybody neighbor, Pam, started out, "Unfortunately, it is not okay that you told Ellie she could go through the mail in my mailbox."  You ugly old bat. [Did I type that outloud?]

I listed all the crimes that were possibly committed and pointed out that she was also guilty of aiding and abetting.  Laid it on with a trowel. 

This is a woman who once came racing over to my house when she saw a contractor walking around giving me an estimate. I  surprised her when I drove into the driveway and caught her in the midst of asking him what he was going to be doing for me.

Busybody. Nosy. Her husband also came to a meeting I called at the Village to get them to fix our backyard flooding, which we argued was caused by allowing two contractors to raise the grade on the houses they built.

He stood up and said he was there to make sure that the village knew that not everyone agreed with what I was doing, He proceeded to try to undermine my credibility, but he was just confusing people and annoying me. After he blathered on for awhile, I finally interrupted him and said, "Just sit down and be quiet, Don." 

Anywho, I'm still stunned that anyone would think it was okay to go through my mailbox for any reason. But I've got the law on my side and I'm looking for a hanging judge.