who said: 'Barack gets credit for picking Marvin Gaye, but if he really knew Marvin Gaye's work, he would have picked something less obvious.'

How about 'Sexual Healing'?

are you related to Camille Paglia by any chance?

It would be nice if you could include a note about the amazing young American woman (Stephanie Brown Trafton) who won the gold medal in THE FREAKING DISCUS!!!

As a track fan, this is like the US men's soccer team winning the World Cup. It's like UT - Chattanooga winning NCAA basketball Champ. It's like University of Kentucky winning NCAA football crown.

The last time one of our women even made the final was in 1984 (boycotted Olympics, our woman finished 2nd). Before that, the last American woman to make a final was 1968 (Olga Connally, ex-Chek married to Hal Connally).

Stephanie finished 3rd at our trials!! She beat all the Eastern Europeans, Cubans, Chinese. You'll have to excuse me, I'm getting all verklempt here, King. I just can't believe one of our woman won the Olympic discus, holy shit.

by McLame. Here he is disparaging the coveted D & D demographic, yet he is also playing the +4 POW-Infallability Club of Righteous Crap...

you really, really don't like the word 'ladyfriend', do you?

Anything that can get a morbidly obese kid off the couch & have them doing aerobic activities & begin working on getting that weight off is A-OK by me.

It is a horrible life for any very fat kid in America. The kids in school will just savage them.

The only downer would be if the kid is making those first steps towars becoming healthy at the camp & then when they get home there is no positive reinforcement from the parents or they just let them go back to munching cheetos & holding the couch down.

that hypothetical ad you sketched out was pretty good. Sounds too hard hitting to be actually used, however (by us Democrats, anyway). Which, of course, is why we we've been beaten the last 2 elections.

As for McLame & the USS Forrestal fire, the Naval Aviation museum at Pensacola NAS has a poingnant exhibit about it (almost all the sailors lost were young enlisted men) & it mentions McLame as being there & it pointedly (for a Repub stronghold) says nothing positive or awe-inspiring about his time on the carrier.

One thing about Rove & his strategery that I agree with is to take on your opponent's perceived strength head on.

Back in prior Olympics they allowed ties in gymnastics. This was also when they were using the 10 point system. Several times a situation occurred where there was a tie for the gold medal & then a 3 way tie for silver, followed by 2 more gymnasts tied for the bronze.

When the scoring system was revamped, the powers-that-be also fixed it so that there wouldn't be anymore of the 6 people on the podium stuff they were running into occasionally.

I watched the routines & thought that (even with the equal start value assigned to the routines) the Chinese gymnast's routine was a little bit harder (more crazy release moves) than Nastia's routine. The Chinese gymnast did have a slight bobble on the dismount, whereas Nastia was rock solid on hers. It is a shame they don't do the ties anymore, as Nastia did a gold medal worthy routine.

Up until her dismount, I thought the British gymnast had the best routine going, but she had a big awkward step on her landing.

P.S. If the winning Chinese gymnast is actually 15, she should win an award for youngest looking 15 year old in the PRC.

to avoid pulling a muscle. Running at the limit like they have to when trying to win an Olympic final puts alot of stress on your leg muscles. Unlike an IAAF meet, where they only run in a final, they have to get it up & down for 3 rounds before the finals.

Also, if they can post a great time while noticably slowing down, that is a way to get in the other competitor's heads (so they think).

who said about 'Dave Satan': 'Satan is the latest in a short list of Republican trolls on Salon that post short, content-free invective, full of misspellings, and last, oh, maybe six months.'

'Dave' is the poster who used to be known as 'Realname'. He has been posting here for a couple of years now.

He also uses the handles 'Electro Robot', 'A Billion Angry Bees', 'Merry Christmas from Hell', and a few more I've forgotten.

His shtick is that we're all a bunch of Throw-the-Jews-down-the-Wellers, except since we're a bunch of latte sipping commie-libs, we're too lazy to actually implement a good pogrom.

Every once in a great while, he'll come our with a funny comment.

who said the sprinters are trying to save their record breaking for the big European meets that offer bonuses.

Back when Sergei Bubka was setting the pole vaulting records for the USSR, it was believed that he received a monetary bonus for each world record he set. This idea was due to fact that when he was at his greatest, he always set his records by 1 or 2 centimeters at the most.

I saw him set one once, where he advanced the record by 1 or 2 centimeters but he cleared the bar by a good foot (and didn't try any more jumps once he had set that record).

If your profession is running, which like pro football doesn't have a very long career path, I can see the reason behind doing what you were mentioning & what Mr. Bubka did. Better get it while you can.

Great line about Mrs. Obama in a previous post: 'Oh my god! She didn't party down with the Tri-Delts! That must make her dangerous!'

Liked the rest of your smackdown. Keep em coming.