Gary_Yngve

Probably about a grand of vert, and some gravel/dirt/washboarding. Lightweight mtn bike would be best.

"Yeah, too bad it's losing two wars to poorly equipped third world foes simultaneously." Tvash is referring to Iraq and Afgh.

Who's Jessica Simpson?

We get it. Isn't it 80% of Alaskans love her? What does that say? It says nothing. A monkey could be handed billions in surplus and divy it out and get 80% approval. The only thing I'll grant Palin as gov is she appears to be less corrupt than her predecessor, but that's not saying much.

Yeah, the media needs to play the candidates to make it close till the end to make it exciting and sensationalized. If it were a blowout, the media would be back to reporting boring news.

What you call flip-flopping I call prudence and good judgment with the consideration of changing times. Obama has had that principle from day 1. The repubs have been consistently "stay the path," "must not deviate from ancient policy" and i find it hard to believe that they now intend to do otherwise, no matter what they say.

it's about time mccain finally admitted it. in the past few weeks we've seen their ticket embrace change over experience. palin is now saying that climate change could be manmade. they are flip-flopping so badly on the issues, only because they had them so wrong to begin with. they are stealing all of obama's longtime issues and calling them their own.

It's well known that McCain doesn't know crap about economics and has some pretty extreme views on the middle class (like defined as makes less than $5mil, thinks economy is going fine but Americans are whiny). Now Palin has argued that she has experience with budgets at the local and state level. My counter to that is a monkey could have managed Alaska's budget. They have so much surplus from the feds/oil companies that there aren't the hard decisions to make in a tight budget. Second, Palin managed to increase state revenue and increase oil company revenue at the same time by raping the environment. That shortsighted mindset cannot be allowed at the national level!

Not at all. A govt balanced on all three branches is the way our founding fathers intended. The death penalty, regardless of being cruel, has little preventative value, and costs taxpayers much more than life without parole. Western Europe does not use the death penalty. Abortion is a sticky issue, I'll admit. My arguments there are that it would happen on the black market if illegal, and it's necessary to prevent unwanted/uncared-for kids who would turn to crime and poverty from the neglect. The notion of religion-aligned teaching from the govt (creationism, or abstinence) violates amendment 1. extreme views such as no abortion even in cases of rape or incest are disgusting. really, the whole abortion thing pisses me off too because they call it that. CALL ABORTION A CHEMICALLY-ASSISTED MISCARRIAGE. Benefits for 95% of Americans seems like a good thing to me. The middle class is hurting, and the neo-cons want to fix it by tax cuts to the rich. I'd still love to hear from a neo-con what their overarching principles are. btw, also, the whole "states rights, lower taxes" thing is funny. i bet most midwest states wouldn't be saying that if they got their federal farm subsidies pulled.

please fill me in. Old-school conservatives stood for strict constructionism, small govt/fiscal responsibility, and states rights. nowadays, the overarching principles seem to be gone, and it's just a smattering of contradictory issues. -pro-life but pro-death-penalty -wants states to choose abortion laws, but not to choose gay marriage laws -tax cuts instead of fiscal responsibility -corporate pandering bordering on corruption -extreme executive domination of the three branches -squashes amendments 1 and 4 under the premise of fighting terrorism, while protecting 2 at the expense of gun accidents/violence

that latenight excerpt is great. "I don't know where you New Yorkers put your lipstick.." "If I were refering to Palin, she would be the lipstick."

Which party wants a govt prohibiting a woman's right to choose? Which party has pushed for extreme violations of civil rights while playing up the fear of terrorism? Which party condones torturing and illegally detaining foreigners, putting our own troops at risk? Which party has used phrases such as "you're either with us or against us", "if you question our strategy, you're not supporting our troops", and "USA, right or wrong"? I think I know which party is more totalitarian.

Slight correction, her police chief wanted to do that, in the name of lower taxes. However, note that she fired the previous police chief and appointed her own crony whom she fully supported. Biden will crush Palin on this issue; he authored the 1994 Violence Against Women Act. Now if only they could actually talk about the issues...

Unfortunately Obama's caught in that same issue, though in my opinion not as evil, because of the Clintons' about-face.

Yeah, those crazy Euros and Kiwis go glacier walking!

What an idiot. "Under God" was added in 1954.

That's a load of crap. Abstinence does have a 100% track record if used PROPERLY. Just as condoms or BCP are 95%+ effective if used diligently, like 80% if not. If you want higher than 95%, you can do condom plus BCP. But sex is so tantalizing that people who swear to abstinence can't stick to it -- they break it -- they are not using it properly. So regardless of it being 100% effective if used properly, it's probably only 80% effective overall, because people break their abstinence. In general, condoms and BCP fail from user error. Waiting too long to put it on, reuse, improper sizing/comes off, forgetting, lack of judgment from drugs/alcohol, past expired date, skipping a pill... It's quite rare for condoms/BCP to fail from manufacturer error, though to my understanding, CCH doesn't make condoms.

You're absolutely right. We don't know the circumstances of the sex, nor what mom told daughter. However: - if mom taught abstinence, that's an ironic anecdote of the ineffectiveness of teaching abstinence - if mom taught safe sex, that's hypocritical for mom to teach one thing but pass laws to teach the other thing Above all though, I think peoples' anger with the whole thing is how the Repubs are embracing it, where were it some black/Latino/poor person, they'd be lambasting them for trying to get on the welfare rolls.

Very simple. A BJ doesn't give the recipient the gift from God of having to make a choice for Life.

From a completely civic point of view, I fail to see how flooding the world with unwanted kids, all in the name of saving a few sacred sperm, is at all beneficial to society. If religious folks want to preach abstinence, let them, but let's keep it out of government... it's a spiritual issue, not a civic issue.

Yeah, this surprised me why they're doing it now all of a sudden rather than earlier. My guess is they wanted to view peoples' reactions before they decided what to do next. Now they think that giving Levi airtime will be good PR. But until they knew that, he was scum, as far as they were concerned.

I agree, there is nothing hilarious about it. It does illustrate the point, however, that policies that prohibit sex-ed, that rely on 'abstinence vows', that inhibit teen access to contraceptives, may not be the most realistic. that is the real issue. ok, so "hilarious" is a poor choice of a word. how about "ironic"?

Yep. Their view is its ok (and even a beautiful gift from God) for a rich white teen to be pregnant, but a poor black teen is pregnant just to get on the welfare rolls.

DARPA invented the Internet Tubes.