September 21, 2008

HOME

Made it home.

Last night was fun, hanging out with my imaginary friends. AWTM and I were the last ones standing. She is a chatty drunk, stopping numerous times along the way home to tell random passersby to beware of the porn peddlers on the strip. And to tell several casino security guards they look like Reno 911.

Also, note to self: never drink rum & coke, wine, beers, amaretto sour, and gin & tonic all in the same night. And then get on a plane the next morning. After four hours of sleep.

But my drinking days are over, and they sure went out with a bang last night! I start fertility treatments in the morning.

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September 20, 2008

A RECORD

AWTM is doing an excellent job of liveblogging the Milblogs Conference. Head to her site and start scrolling...

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HAVING FUN DOING NOTHING AT ALL

Either AWTM has been exaggerating her insomnia, or we've discovered the cure: gin and tonic.

Last night I got into Vegas and, after an annoying mix-up and no one calling me back to let me know where to meet them, I ended up just going to bed. AWTM rolled in in the middle of the night and fell asleep the instant her head hit the pillow.

I, on the other hand, only slept from midnight to 2:00 and then 5:00-7:00. Not good. The time change threw me all off.

As does the fact that I'm in the desert and my lips feel like they're going to shrivel and fall off.

But I'm sitting on a sofa beside Guard Wife, surfing the internet together. Sigh...heaven.

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September 19, 2008

VIVA LAS VEGAS

I'm on my way to Vegas today for the Blog World Expo. Don't worry, there will be plenty of internet connection.

I was joking with Guard Wife the other day that my favorite thing about my internet buddies is that I don't have to pretend I'm not glued to my computer all day long. When I hang out with people in the Real World, I have to pretend I'm not jonesing for a trip around the 'sphere. In contrast, when I went to visit AirForceFamily, all three of us adults sat around the kitchen table with three laptops and surfed the internet together.

Course, when I was a kid I used to play marathon games of solitare alongside my brother as well.

Come to think of it, I used to host BYOB parties: bring your own book. My friends and I would literally sit in a room and read together.

Apparently I really like to do solitary activities in a crowd.

Where was I? Right, Vegas. I'm headed to Vegas to surf the internet alongside some of my favorite people on this planet.

More later.

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September 18, 2008

WITH BOTH FINGERS

This is a week old, but it's too good not to point out. Rachel Lucas was on fire when she saw the silly British article that said that electing McCain is giving the rest of the world the middle finger. She starts with this:

In all seriousness though. I canÂ’t speak for any other Stupid American, but Europe and Rest of World? Wanna know why I donÂ’t give a toss what you think? Because youÂ’re doing it wrong.

YouÂ’re doing so many things wrong, in my view, that I want my country to be very different from yours.

And tears it up from there. With plenty of naughty language. Read it all.

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CALL ME A MORON

Don't you love when commenters rip on everyone else for being stupid...and then reveal their own shortcomings? I was watching a youtube clip of some Obama splices and saw this recent comment:


Hahahahaha.
If you believe this clip to show the truth about Obama, chances are good that your IQ is way below average.
The sheer amount of cuts mid-sentence in this clip is pretty much proof of that.

Besides, doesn't the US constitution explicitly encourage people to be critical about government and their own country? I guess morons just forgot that little tiny detail.

Maybe I am a moron, but I don't remember that "explicit" part of the constitution. Do you think he means the part of the Declaration of Independence about throwing off the despotism, or is he just running his mouth?

Or maybe he thinks that Thomas Jefferson really said that dissent was the highest form of patriotism. Heh.

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September 17, 2008

OVER AT SPOUSEBUZZ

That John Adams Bullcrap

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AH, EUROPE

Anti-Americanism in Europe Fueled by Ignorance

For another thing, statistics show that Europeans are not nearly as well traveled in America as Americans are in Europe. According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, some 11.4 million Europeans visited the United States in 2007, which is roughly 2.5 percent of the European population. (By contrast, a record 13.3 million Americans visited Europe in 2007, or roughly 5 percent of the U.S. population.) The lack of firsthand knowledge of the United States is arguably the biggest reason why ordinary Europeans cannot discern fact from fiction when it comes to America.

From the comments section: "Some of my most heated conversations were with people who claimed to know everything about the U.S. even though they never came here. For example, did you know the U.S. has 52 states?" Ha, I had the exact same discussion in Sweden. A guy insisted that Puerto Rico was a state and refused to listen to me when I said it is not.

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BWAHAHA

This made me laugh out loud. I remember seeing it on SNL years ago, but I had forgotten how funny it is. Thanks, Oda Mae!

McCain Sings Streisand!

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September 16, 2008

NEIGHBORLY

I caught parts of the Obama interview with Bill O'Reilly, but since I already know I'm not going to vote for him, I didn't go out of my way to hear what else he has to say. So I was surprised when Oda Mae sent me this Jacoby article with a quote I didn't hear the first time around.

Well, I guess I'm just not very neighborly.

"If I am sitting pretty and you've got a waitress who is making minimum wage plus tips, and I can afford it and she can't, what's the big deal for me to say, I'm going to pay a little bit more? That's neighborliness." If that is Obama's rationale for making the tax code even more steeply progressive than it already is, it's no wonder voters are having second thoughts about his economic aptitude.

"Neighborliness." Perhaps that word has a nonstandard meaning to someone whose home adjoined the property of convicted swindler Tony Rezko, but extracting money by force from someone who earned it in order to give it to someone who didn't is not usually spoken of as neighborly. If Citizen Obama, "sitting pretty," reaches into his own pocket and helps out the waitress with a large tip, he has shown a neighborly spirit. But there is nothing neighborly about using the tax code to compel someone else to pay the waitress that tip.

Taxation is not generosity, it is confiscation at gunpoint. Does Obama not understand the difference?

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September 15, 2008

IT'S FINE

For the record, I think McCain looks just fine in this cover photo.

mcov.jpg

I think he looks way less ridiculous than this cover.

obama-time.jpg

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VISIONS

Read Jonah Goldberg's Very Different Visions. Yes, who indeed is speaking for the "indispensable left-handed Samoans living on fixed incomes in the increasingly gay suburbs around Cleveland?" Heh.

Best Mike Huckabee quote ever: "I'm not a Republican because I grew up rich," he proclaimed, "I'm a Republican because I didn't want to spend the rest of my life poor, waiting for the government to rescue me."

I didn't grow up rich and neither did my husband. We started our marriage with no income for four months and $200 to our name. But every day since we've come a little bit closer to our goal of being fat, rich, white Republicans.

And our vision is the winner vision.

UPDATE:

Dang, we lost like eight grand overnight. Stupid Lehman jerks.

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September 14, 2008

THREE CHEERS FOR PRICE GOUGING

I admit that everything I know about economics I learned from Thomas Sowell, but this morning I feel like I know more than some folks on TV. I want to throw stuff at the screen when they start talking about gas price gouging. I just actually heard someone say, "The oil companies are making a profit and it needs to stop." Oh puh-lease. This can't be considered serious commentary.

Here's some basic economics:

What all this boils down to is that prices higher than what observers are used to are called "gouging." In other words, prices under normal conditions are supposed to prevail under abnormal conditions. This completely misunderstands the role of prices.

Why do prices exist at all? To cause things to be produced and made available to the public -- and to cause consumers to limit how much they consume. Why then do prices suddenly shoot up? Because there is either less of a supply available or more of a demand, or both.

And here's more, worded differently:

Prices are not just arbitrary numbers plucked out of the air. Nor are the price levels that you happen to be used to any more special or "fair" than other prices that are higher or lower.

What do prices do? They not only allow sellers to recover their costs, they force buyers to restrict how much they demand. More generally, prices cause goods and the resources that produce goods to flow in one direction through the economy rather than in a different direction.

Plus a breakdown of why price gouging is necessary and helpful:

One hotel whose rooms normally cost $40 a night now charged $109 a night and another hotel whose rooms likewise normally cost $40 a night now charged $160 a night.
[...]
What if prices were frozen where they were before all this happened?

Those who got to the hotel first would fill up the rooms and those who got there later would be out of luck -- and perhaps out of doors or out of the community. At higher prices, a family that might have rented one room for the parents and another for the children will now double up in just one room because of the "exorbitant" prices. That leaves another room for someone else.

Someone whose home was damaged, but not destroyed, may decide to stay home and make do in less than ideal conditions, rather than pay the higher prices at the local hotel. That too will leave another room for someone whose home was damaged worse or destroyed.

In short, the new prices make as much economic sense under the new conditions as the old prices made under the old conditions.

Too bad few people on TV have any sort of economic sense.

So people who don't need to gas up their cars this week will wait for next week, leaving the gas for people who really need it right now. Duh, that's how the market works during a crisis. And gas station owners will have to replenish their pumps with more expensive gas, so they have to adjust now.

Really, if I can understand it, it ain't that complicated.

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September 13, 2008

JUXTAPOSITION

I read this this morning:

Jonathan Haidt, an associate professor of moral psychology at the University of Virginia, argues in an essay this month, “What Makes People Vote Republican?”, that it’s liberals, in fact, who are dangerously blind.

Haidt has conducted research in which liberals and conservatives were asked to project themselves into the minds of their opponents and answer questions about their moral reasoning. Conservatives, he said, prove quite adept at thinking like liberals, but liberals are consistently incapable of understanding the conservative point of view.

Then I read this:

I'm not even getting into the fact that the religious right teaches closed mindedness so it's almost impossible to gain new voters from their pool because people who disagree with them are agents of the devil.

Heh.

And a comment from the same post:

We remain a country of beer, bubbas, bibles and bigots, who are easily persuaded by a few billionaires to vote in the rich's best interests. It's inescapable.

Like I said, keep 'em coming, Left. Keep 'em coming.

Oh, and since I mentioned this to my mother when I was home and she had never heard of the elitist garbage that Michelle Obama has said, let me point out that she thinks $600 is chump change for buying earrings and that she complained to working women in Ohio that she spends $10,000 a year on her kids' piano and dance.

Honestly, I thought it couldn't get any better than when Teresa Heinz Kerry didn't know what chili was...but apparently it can.

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FISKS

Let's enjoy some liberal condescension, shall we? And fisking thereof.

First: Lileks from Wednesday, taking on a Canadian columnist.
Mark Hemingway taking on a NYT article about Palin's weird religion.

Hey media, feel free to keep stuff like this coming. It makes average Americans disgusted and happy to vote for the normal mom from Alaska who doesn't feed her kids brie for breakfast or fake a trip to Wendy's.

And by all means, keep helping Obama make fun of McCain for his war injuries. That plays really well too. Anything you can do to keep reminding people that John McCain gave so much for his country that he can't even brush his hair or type on a keyboard.

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September 11, 2008

BLEH

Yeah, so I drunk snail-mailed my husband tonight.
It's like drunk-dialing, only it won't get to him for two weeks.
I pent up four months of dead babies and deployment and unleashed it all on 9/11 coverage. Not good.

UPDATE:

I hadn't mailed the letter yet, so I got up this morning and read it. Ha. Don't worry, I didn't write the letter about depressing stuff; that's just what prompted me to grab a pen. It seems I wrote about T. Boone Pickens and Band of Brothers. It's very rambling and ridiculous.

Oh, and I feel fine this morning, and really...could a super-drunk person have cleared through Level 23 on Dr. Mario? I think not. I can handle my wine.

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YES WE CAN

Yes yes yes yes yes.
Because it's today, or because of the wine, or because of Whittle...I am just embiggened by this article that I missed last week:
Proud of the GOP: For the first time, I feel like we deserve to win more than they deserve to lose.

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September 10, 2008

WOW

This story made me laugh and cry: Disney motto helped dad, autistic son survive at sea
No matter what gremlins I battle this week, I won't have to tread water for 14 hours and drift away from my child.
There are sure some people out there who endure the worst.

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SAVIN' BACON

My husband will be proud of his business-savvy wife! I called to get the windshield fixed and got an estimate of $394. The man said that windshield must've been made of solid gold; it's the most expensive one he's ever seen. I called a couple other places, and his was the best price. Then, on a hunch, I called our car insurance company and asked them if they'd cover it. They don't, but they found a place to do it for $318. So I called back the original place to cancel my appointment, and they said they wanted my business and would beat the other offer and do it for $300.

So, I saved a hundred bucks! Funny how I feel excited about spending $300 but saving $100.

One gremlin down...

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LIPSTICKGATE

I thought I'd weigh in on Lipstickgate.

Obama said, "You can put lipstick on a pig. It's still a pig." He was referring to how McCain is now also running as the candidate for change. Many folks are upset that Obama seemingly called Palin a pig.

Let me say, I thought it was the funniest, most clever thing to ever come out of Obama's mouth.

I mean, come on: that's a great comeback. I personally don't think it has to be taken as sexist. Palin used lipstick to get a laugh line and a round of applause; Obama turned the tables back at her with a well-known idiom.

I honestly thought it was the funniest thing Obama's ever said. But I'm nutty like that. People really seem to be freaking out about this and saying that it will cost Obama support. Hey, whatever makes people not vote for him...

But you know what's way more offensive than what Obama said? What Juan Cole said: "What's the difference between Palin and Muslim fundamentalists? Lipstick." That article is just sick.

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