My husband and I had a roaring good laugh at this article on Drudge: Singles will check out eligible candidates at Obama rally. It's not really that funny -- if I were single, I too would rather meet someone at a political rally than a bar -- but some of the quotes were just hilarious.

Even the invite for the event reads like a singles bash:

"Hope hits the Big Apple! Join us at Jay-Z's 4-0/40 Club on Thursday as we ride the winds of change from the hottest rally in New York. Move to the music, socialize with friends, and let your voice be heard as we celebrate with audacity."

Lindsay Schaeffer, 25, may even skip the rally for the nighttime bash.

That cracks me up. Why would someone waste time on the silly politics when she can just skip ahead for the hook-up scene? I want to date an Obama supporter, without all that pesky Obama stuff killing my buzz.

One ardent Obama supporter (who declined to give his name because he works in politics) says he'll attend both the rally and the after-party, and he doesn't expect to be going home alone.

He's confident for a reason.

"Let's face it: Leftie girls are easy," he says.

Bwahahaha. Nice.

Posted by: Sarah at 04:40 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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I just really loved this article: Soldier Loses 160 Pounds in Order to Meet Weight Requirement

Especially this part:

Pfc. Trippany's father, an infantryman with 24 years of active-duty service, had a solution. She moved back home, started a special diet and began her body transformation.

"I did Jenny Craig for the diet and then for exercise I would walk four miles per day. My dad wanted me to keep a 3.6 mile-per-hour pace in order to keep my cardio up, so every day, for 17 months, my dad drove behind me in his truck while I walked," said Pfc. Trippany.

"My dad even moved the family refrigerator out to the garage and bought another refrigerator for the food I was allowed to eat and put that one in the kitchen. There was no way for me to sneak food as the family fridge had a key lock on it and I didn't have the code. So, I was really on lockdown."

I think that parents often need to let their adult children face their own challenges and tackle their own demons. The helicopter parent phenomenon is a little creepy. But I love the fact that, once she came to her father for help, he took her seriously and really helped her. He spent money for a new fridge and countless hours trailing her in the car because he loves her and wanted to help her reach her goal. She said she wanted to lose the weight, and dad busted her butt to help her do it.

I just think that's really good teamwork.

Posted by: Sarah at 10:05 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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I started thinking about forgiveness the other day when I was in Blockbuster and happened to walk by a movie called Forgiving Dr. Mengele. It's about an Auschwitz survivor who learns to forgive the Nazis for the genetic experiments they did on her. Ouch.

And I come back to forgiveness today with this headline: Amish donate cash to school gunmanÂ’s widow

I'm thinking about the virtue of forgiveness. I would imagine that, in those circumstances, one might feel the need to forgive in order to move on. But as an outsider, I don't really forgive any of those bastards.

But no one's ever accused me of being nice.

Posted by: Sarah at 02:11 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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1 I wonder how many of those who donated now wish they hadn't. Frankly, I'd be pissed.

Posted by: tim at September 14, 2007 04:59 AM (nno0f)

2 Everyday I get at least 3 or 4 hits looking for an update on the Amish School Shooting. This donation does not surprise me one bit. It's who they are. That "man" was a part of their community. An "English", but a part non the less. They will NOT allow his family to suffer for his deeds. It is not their way. No, I'm not surprised to read this at all. But I'll tell you, even having been a part of that "culture" I don't have that kind of forgiveness in me. It's not in my personal make-up.......

Posted by: Tammi at September 14, 2007 05:35 AM (eAXdf)

3 Guess I'm not a nice enough person. Not when it's something like forgiving Mengele. The widow of the school shooter - I don't know what to think of her. She didn't do it, I don't know that she could have stopped it unless he told her what he was going to do. Yet she gets to live with what he did for the rest of her life. If she was as taken by surprise as the rest of the country - I feel very sorry for her. If she knew about it and had a chance to stop it yet didn't do anything - she's worse than he is. It's the not knowing that puts me in a quandary about her.

Posted by: Teresa at September 14, 2007 06:02 AM (rVIv9)

4 I don't mean my post to make it sound like I'm blaming the widow. She wasn't one of the "bastards" I meant I do feel sorry for her, and I don't mind that donated money goes to help her...actually, less than I mind that donated money went to Kathy Trant.

Posted by: Sarah at September 14, 2007 08:55 AM (TWet1)

5 I wish I could say that I could give that kind of forgiveness but I don't think it is in me either.

Posted by: Lemon Stand at September 14, 2007 02:51 PM (JROsA)

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Every year on this day, I spend some time refocusing. I remember my laser beam. But this year I feel pretty good, actually. I feel that my family is focused, that we're headed down the right path, that we will be useful to our country in the biggest struggle of my lifetime. My laser beam is intact, so today I will instead focus on remembering those we've lost, in NYC, in Bali, in Spain, in OEF and OIF. And daily in places that rarely get mentioned when people speak of jihad, like Thailand. This war is far from over.

From an article on MSNBC:

The total number of victims killed six years ago — 2,974 — includes 2,750 at the World Trade Center site. Forty were killed in Pennsylvania and 184 died at the Pentagon. Those numbers do not include the 19 hijackers.

As they damn well shouldn't.

MORE TO GROK:

Jay Tea writes at Wizbang that, while most remember the sadness, 9/11 was a day of rage. I re-read my old post about the first anniversary of 9/11, and I still have plenty of rage: Anger.

Posted by: Sarah at 03:19 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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The Swedes have a word that we don't have, a word for your degrees of separation with celebrities. If your brother's friend was a finalist on American Idol, then that's called a "Lassie" (Wikipedia explains why). That's probably my biggest Lassie, but I just discovered another one: a girl who was on study abroad in France at the same time as I was is now on that show Sunset Tan. I watched an episode -- and remembered why I hate reality shows; one episode is plenty -- just for kicks, and, um, yep...that's her. Whew, she grew up to be a spray tanner, so all is right in the universe.

So, what's your Lassie?

Posted by: Sarah at 08:32 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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I missed this while I was on vacation a month ago, so forgive me for rehashing old news. But wtf?

Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards on Thursday unveiled a plan that would increase taxes for the wealthy and create tax breaks for the middle class.
...
Among the proposals, Edwards would make long-term savings easier for low-income families with “Get Ahead Accounts” that would match savings up to $500 per year.

Wow. We really live in a country where a presidential candidate wants to take money that belongs in the earner's savings account, launder it through the government tax system, and put it in the savings account of someone who didn't earn it.

What I hate about Republican candidates is that they never seem to cut through the euphemisms. There's always a way to rephrase what Democrats want to do that makes them look bad. All you have to do is point out that someone worked hard to earn that money, and the government took it away and put it into someone else's bank account. If you get someone to admit that that's what he wants to see happen, you reveal something about his character and values. If you let him call it pretty things like Get Ahead Accounts, you let him frame the debate. Republicans need to refocus things like this on the taking of the money and stop letting Democrats focus on the giving of the money.

John Edwards wants poor people to take home rich people's money. That's fine if he wants to start passing out his own hundred dollar bills, but it plain stinks when he wants to force the whole country to participate.

Posted by: Sarah at 06:24 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Via Boobs, Injuries, and Dr. Pepper blog, I learned that playing around with anything that can even be remotely construed as possibly maybe racist in some way can get you fired from your job.

The Germantown administration on Wednesday defended its firing of three theater workers who tied stage-rigging ropes into hangman's nooses.

...

"I've seen plenty of stagehands whittling their time away by tying all kinds of knots," said Bob Hetherington, chairman of the department of Theatre and Dance at the University of Memphis.

"If they were trying to send a racial message of any kind, the fly system of a theater would be the last place anyone would see it."

But someone did see the nooses.

Another city employee, an African American, complained of a hostile work environment when he saw the nooses.

...

Laraway gave The Commercial Appeal his account of what happened.

"I was working with a gentleman I had never worked with before and we were talking about how to tie different knots. I asked him if he knew how to tie a bowline and he said yes. Then I asked him if he knew how to tie a hangman's noose, and I showed him.

So some people are sitting there with a bunch of rope, comparing different ways of tying them. Naturally, that makes them racist.

Geez Louise, have we completely lost touch of all common sense in this country?

Posted by: Sarah at 08:40 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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AWTM's son got a little upset at kindergarten the other day:

However, the other day upon picking Sir Rowland up from school, his teacher stopped me to tell me Sir Rowland was a little upset over one of the little girls t-shirts. It read. Girls are Smart, and in parenthesis said (boys are not). This upset Sir Rowland to no end. He was very upset, and made his teacher tell the little girl, that he a boy, was indeed smart.

One of my major pet peeves is t-shirts with suggestive and/or snotnosed punk sayings. What kind of person buys this crap for his child, let alone for one as young as a kindergartner? I think it's shameful enough when I see preteens wearing baloney like the "I may not be on time, but I'm worth the wait" shirt I saw a while back, or the kid in my neighborhood with the "Respect Me!" shirt. I was thankful to see an article at Slate a while back called Lolita's Closet: Unbearably Trampy Back-to-School Clothes. At least I'm not the only one who thinks that the teen shopping section is ripped right from the South Park "Stupid Spoiled Whore" script.

I know every parent on the planet, at one time or another, has uttered the words "my child will not wear that," but I seriously mean it. My child will not wear shirts with disgusting and degrading slogans. Period. Because I'm the mom, that's why.

MORE TO GROK:

My husband made a good point after hearing this story. He wonders how it would've gone over if a boy in the class were wearing a shirt that says that boys are smart and girls are not. Or, heaven forbid, insert a race or ethnicity. What would the teacher make of a "Puerto Ricans are dumb" shirt? Always curious about double standards...

Posted by: Sarah at 03:30 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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