"What else could he do"

He could stand up like the man of honor he pretends to be and tell his people to cut it the hell out. If people start the two minutes hate at a rally where he's speaking he can stop them and say "I don't agree with Obama's choices or plans, but he's an honorable man and if he should be lucky enough and strong enough to beat me in this election we all need to support him as our president."

But I guess that's asking a bit much.

Methinks the lady reads too many romance novels or something.

"I am so enraged by your bourgeois nature and the candidate that you support that after I have sated myself with violence I'm going to put my hand up your blouse and squeeze one of your breasts. Just one, methinks squeezing them both would be excessive, don't you?"

Not to mention

"Pardon me, ma'am, while I put away my mugging knife to get out my scratching knife so I can leave you with a mark that'll remind you clear to election day who's the best candidate"

Her "attacker" seems to be extremely considerate, more like a drunken frat boy than a desperate inner city mugger. Maybe that's it, it was more like

"Damn, I don't have a sharpie. Anybody got a sharpie? Damn, I'll have to mark her with this butter knife instead"

The only other detail that I haven't seen discussed is, why would someone mark someone on the cheek? Maybe I'm overthinking this, but if I wanted to carve a recognizable shape on someone's face I'd pick a smoother, flatter, area like the forehead. On the cheek, you've got the cheekbone, then the unsupported cheek, then chin to work with. She'd be screaming and moving her mouth all around. You'd need to be either very careful (as our "mugger" seems to have been) or very reckless.

All caveats apply, if this is true, etc, but this stinks like last week's halibut. I'll believe it when I see the police and doctors say this was not self inflicted and/or makeup. Makeup and make believe.

Wish I had the cite, but I read recently that a big reason for plummeting oil prices is that banks and other large investors are needing to sell off assets to raise cash, and that oil futures are one of the things that they're selling. The bad news is, when the short term sell off is over, oil prices go back up and stay there.

So anyone who's making any plans based on long term low oil prices might want to rethink their approach.

Seems convincing to me.

I still don't get why this line sells at all to McCain crowds. If he were even honest enough to be internally consistent, his position would be better represented as "Barack Obama wants to take money from rich people and give it to you" which seems like it oughta be something people would kinda go for.

Michael Steele says "Government never created a single job". Huh. I wonder who he works for?

I put myself through college. It was the 70's, when things like that could be done with hard (hard) work (at the age of 18 I once worked 28 out of 32 consecutive hours for minimum wage) and scholarships. I didn't even need to take out any loans until I think my junior year. I got NO cash support from my parents but I stayed at my mom's house during summers and long xmas breaks.

Many, many years later, some statements my mom made rang against statements my dad made a long time ago (he died 20 years ago). My dad was or was not paying child support to my mom for me through my college years which was supposed to help support my college career. Other than free rent in the summers, I got no support. Mom said, not that long ago "Did your dad ever give you that money? Because he was supposed to pay you directly instead of paying child support to me" The statement I vaguely remember from my dad was, "Well, you know your mom is supposed to be supporting you from the money I pay in child support".

It's 30 years ago now, my mom is the only one who knows the true story and the story as she tells it is how she remembers it. But it doesn't ring true. It's pointless to bring it up now, there's no truth to find or justice to be had. And, indeed, I've gone on to a fair amount of success, good career, happy family.

But I had a real moment of bitterness when I realized that one or both of my parents was stealing from me while I was struggling to put myself through college.

I don't know if this adds to the discussion but it feels REALLY good to say it out loud.

should read "28 out of 38 consecutive hours"