Over the years of my life I have learned one thing: Girls who get pregnant and decide to keep their babies are idiots. No ifs, ands or buts about it. They are almost always brain dead. Bristol Palin may or may not be an exception. After all, look at the family within which she must live. But the brain dead part still applies. Taking into account teenage hormones and teenage rebellion, I cannot for the life of me understand why that child would chose to have sex - probably unprotected - before marriage while in that family.

Perhaps I'm old-fashioned. I recall that in the late 70s/early 80s most girls closed their legs because their mothers had taught them that "good boys" didn't ask for otherwise. That "good boys" would only ask for that if they loved them...and that they'd better make sure that was true. So now, what is Bristol's excuse?

I mean, when did she and her beaux find the time? Especially in such a politically charged household? My conservative, New England Catholic mother watched me like a hawk, and for precisely this reason. Where was Sarah? Where was her husband?? How did these two kids find the time???

Well, I have a feeling a lot more is going to come out of the weeks. I have a very STRONG feeling that we're going to find out that not only Bristol but her slightly younger sisters got - GASP! - abortions at some point. Think that's too off the charts? Think again. Think of Jimmy Swaggart. Think of Ted Haggard. The walls are gonna come crumbling down.

...in 1947, when Milton Berle got big ratings just for putting on a fucking dress. It's been downhill ever since (with a few notable exceptions).

But now I do. This guy actually thinks that Jim Webb and other traitors to this country are "building blocks" to the future?! Man, what the hell is he smoking and how do I get me some??

Kos is the problem, not the solution. Though he is right that genuine grassroots organizing is the way to go, we can't afford to waste that energy on assholes like Jim Webb. We must build our own politicians the way the Swedes did in 1921. The way the Danes did a bit later. We must confince the people that "rugged individualism" is code for "you will die homeless if you're not lucky and NO, you won't die rich."

Only by spreading that message will we end the cycle of violent economic suppression that we've had in this country lo these 28 years.

The word is "deranged", or perhaps "fanatic." I wonder if, now that she knows the potential results, Palin will continue having sex with her husband. If she does, will she go on pumping out genetically defective children all the way into her fifties and, God forbid, beyond? And once Her family is half healthy and half freak, what then? This is not what I want representing my country to the rest of the world. I do not want a religious fanatic a heartbeat away from the presidency. And last but not least, I know of a question that Palin MUST be asked during the Vice Presidential Debates: "Governor Palin, what are your views of the Christian Reconstructionist movement, and other movements that would like to transform the United States into a Christian theocracy?" Let's see how she answers that.

Sorry, but an NC-17 rating is the kiss of death. Most theatre chains refuse to exhibit films with that rating, most media outlets refuse to advertise them, and Blockbuster and Netflix refuse to stock them. How that isn't de facto censorship is beyond me.

Then, in 1995, I went and saw "Heat." And then I knew.

Al Pacino blew DeNiro right off the screen. It was the humanity he portrayed. DeNiro could only act as DeNiro has always acted, like an angry iciclel. Pacino acted like a genuine human being.

...then they deserve what they get. The pity of it is that the rest of us will get it too.

And she wanted nothing so much as for her children to have a better life than she did. In point of fact she HATED slaughtering and dressing chickens and hogs, churning butter, milking cows and so forth. As soon as she found an escape route - my Great-Grandfather, a tradesman who earned very good money - she took and never looked back. Moreover, she worked hard her whole life to see to it that she and her family never wanted for anything (straight through the Great Depression and WWII), and took full advantage of the prosperity of the 1950s. This led to a very comfortable and secure retirement for both of them in the 70s and 80s, until they both passed away in the early 90s.

My Great-Grandmother would have laughed out loud at Paglia's hagiography of rural life, largely in disgust. Paglia has, in this essay, reproduced the same ignorant romanticizing of the rural class that infected early Communists. Talk about irony!

As often as not, it's the last line that makes or breaks a Berkeley Breathed strip. "Alex. He's a penguin" is one of those lines. Long may Berk reign.