... have stated categorically that there have never been any discussions of having Palin on her show, and Palin never asked to be on it. This is one of those whipped-up-out-of-thin-air "controversies" to give Repub women an excuse to scream shrilly. Ignore them.

A conservative friend sent me an email quoting Pastor Dutch Sheet of the Freedom Church in Colorado Springs that McCain and Palin are prophesied to be elected. I threw up just a little before sending back a polite but pointed email. As a liberal Christian, I'm embarrassed to be considered in the same group as these people.

After I read that the National Guard was not allowed to return to help their own towns during Katrina, I've thought that this was in the works. National Guard troops protect their own communities; a occupying US Army force has no ties to the community, and so little incentive to work with the locals or even be concerned overly much with casualties.

Remember when we were all worried about occupying forces from Communist Russia (ala "Red Dawn")? Who thought we'd have to worry about fighting back against our own Army?

How about just being an authentic person and treating the other person as a "real person" too? If a man thinks he has to be a certain "type", then he's probably going to find women who are a certain "type" also, and neither is being their authentic self. They get together, they continue to act a certain way (because that's what attracted the other), and then they get married and wonder, "What happened to the person I married?"

Solution: be courteous to everyone, be interested in other people (even if they're not your "type"), and don't be a jerk. Realize that there's no monolithic "feminist" or "masculine" agenda; everyone has their own issues. Start thinking of the other sex as individuals with their own desires.

This *might* be a deterrent to others; I can imagine that a stalker would think that paying money would be a fairly painless penalty for his conduct, but to suffer blindness and pain....? In many countries jail is seen as a sign of street cred, not as personal a consequence as being the subject of an-eye-for-an-eye retribution. A young man who is crippled this way would not be looked up to as a tough guy, but seen as an object of pity.

On the other hand, such stalkers aren't really thinking in the first place, so who knows if it'll be a deterrent.

My heart goes out to the victim, though, and all victims like her. If she takes the cash, she's saying that her life is worth a finite amount of money. She doesn't have many options, does she?

Welcome to reality. We hope you like it here.

Kisses,

The Rest of the World

... about pregnant women. It makes me smile to imagine Michelle - an accomplished, intelligent, busy woman when not pregnant - fixing her husband with "the look" over her pregnant stomach. I'll bet he snapped right up and did whatever it was she needed done.

"I don't do X, so Y will not happen. I'm not like those people". Wrong and tragic. How many of us have had a brief moment of inattention, had something go sideways, but was able to recover in time?

EVERY parent has done it - nearly tripping over a toddler while carrying a pot of hot water, not seeing the child behind the car, name your potential tragedy. But we were able to avert disaster in that brief split-second, and we all thought "what if...". Well, those parents faced the moment when "what if" turned into "it did".

When we read about those cases, we'd like to comfort ourselves with thinking that we're good parents, not like those parents, and those things can't happen to use or our children.

Wrong. We were just lucky, and keeping that in mind helps us respond with kindness and empathy.... and allows us to grieve with them.

Whatever the fine points of her message, at least she's talking about the economy in a common-sense, understandable way. She didn't say that we need [Obscure Name #1] regulation or [Obscure Name #2] law; she was clear about the crossroads we face in this-vs-that terms. That alone makes her worth listening to.

Perhaps some of the folks who feel lost listening to the usual talking heads will say, "Now THAT I understand", and they'll get behind efforts to fix the economy instead of throwing up their hands in despair and turning to the next reality show.

I am participating in a forum discussion right now at SeattleTimes.com about this issue. We have a local minister who loudly protests the National Day of Silence (he actually organized a protest at the school last year), and he seems like a big (I won't say grown-up) version of the it's-all-about-me bully that these kids are protesting against.

The comments are astounding to me. I mentioned Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover, and he was dismissed with a "well, he was mentally ill", implying that no "normal" child would commit suicide because of being bullied.

I'm glad to say that most of the postings come down on the side of the kids and their message, but.... {shaking head in despair}.

No wonder this happens - where are the so-called adults? What are they teaching their kids? Does no one remember what it was like at that age? Or were they raised in a bubble so they never were bullied or saw bullying?