I'm going to have to agree with gayle. Please keep in mind, that I'm proudly pro-choice, I'm just trying to highlight the underlying issues here.

McCain opposes abortion except when the life of the mother is in danger, rape, or incest. There's nothing about allowing abortion when it risk to a mother's health.

Such risks to a mother's health could include mental or physical damage, such as postpartum depression or inability to bear future children. McCain is correct that in countries with abortion bans that make exceptions for a women's health, this exception is often stretched by pro-choice doctors to include a variety of possible health issues. As Gayle put it:

To opponents of legalizing abortion, the "mental health" reference was seen as a sort of catch-all classification that could justify just about anything and thus make "abortion on demand" legal in all but name.

Maybe folks didn't fully get McCain's position on abortion? His statements at the debate last night, while poorly framed, are entirely consistent with his beliefs about abortion.

Thankfully, I don't have any experience with traumatic assaults or crime like the young woman in this case.

However, speaking from my experience while grieving the death of a family member in my 20s, I can say that I was very good at hiding my emotions and grief at parties and in pictures. I may not have felt up to partying, but I pretended I was, so that I wouldn't have to talk about my grief with people who didn't really understand or care. With close friends, I was open about my feelings, but with drinking buddies, not so much.

I think a lot of people do the same thing with whatever their issues are.

I took a MBA class with a world-famous negotiations professor and our homework every week was to negotiate for something -- anything.

The ideal was that negotiating wasn't something you could learn solely by reading books or in the classroom; it was a skill that you had to practice.

It sounds like the blogger is taking his advice & teaching style to heart.

Women do tend to be reluctant to ask for things because they want to avoid being seen as pushy, but really, it never hurts to ask as long as you are polite about it.

@ kuhnigget

Thanks -- I definitely meant President Hoover.

"President Truman was a bit late on the Great Depression scene, don't you think? I presume you mean Hoover."

There's only so much the Fed and other Central Banks can do to avert the financial crisis. Relying solely on monetary policy to solve this is a recipe for disaster.

Also, if the financial institutions don't have the confidence to lend money or need that money to build up their credit holdings, then it doesn't matter what the interest rates are or how much is in the money supply.

Japan had a near zero interest rate for years and it was still in a near recession state for a decade.

President Truman had an opportunity to stop the Great Depression, but was swayed by laissez faire Economics and made a few half-hearted measures.

The problem is that once the confidence in the markets is gone, it's going to take a lot to restore it. Think about why we support early treatment of disease. If you want until the infection is full-blown and the patient is on life-support, it's going to take a lot more medical intervention to succeed. If you stop it at the beginning, when the patient only has a slight fever, you can stop it with some antibiotics.

This isn't about bailing out the fat cats anymore. It's about whether you want to be able to borrow money (for your car, house, student loans), what interest rates you're going to see on your credit card statements, and whether companies can pay their bills, never mind raise the capital to expand and create new jobs. If we don't act now, it is going to get a lot worse. And it's going to cost us EVEN MORE to clean it up.

The country is too important to me to let us gamble on how things are going to go down. Maybe we won't have another depression. But we could also suffer like Japan did in the 1990s after their stock market & real estate bubbles burst with a decade of no growth. That's right, ten years of near recession.

You guys have no idea what the country could face by not supporting strong Government intervention.

And for the idiots promoting "free markets" as the reason not to intervene-- Have you taken an Economics class? Or studied any Macroeconomics whatsoever?

If it's just, as you say, "a goddamn form", then why do these people care so much about it?

>Has it always been this way?

No, California's marriage licenses used to say "Bride" and "Groom". The state switched to using gender neutral language after the state Supreme Court ruling.

From the Sacramento Bee newspaper (http://www.sacbee.com/101/story/1239279.html):

'In May, after the California State Supreme Court ruled same-sex marriage legal, the courts mandated state officials to provide gender-neutral licenses and other marriage forms. "Bride" and "groom" became "Party A" and "Party B."'

Great post! I'm so glad you shared it with us.

So, it's official. America is no longer a meritocracy, but is now a mediocracy.

Can't find the ad on Youtube and the correct links aren't working for me.

Sorry, was trying to be helpful, but it's been a long day.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHN9bLCgF7k

Note on Youtube's site: "We are currently performing site maintenance. Be cool - we'll be back 100% in a bit."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBsRbMimtlA&feature=rec-fresh