August 20, 2011

Hit the road!



UPDATE: Home! We're not in Colorado. That picture is from August 4th. But we did go out for a 26-mile bike ride, in lovely weather — 60s and low 70s — here in Wisconsin.

47 comments:

pm317 said...

"Hit the road!"?!

Are you driving your commenters away? ;) But may be I should hit the road. It is a gorgeous day.

Bob Ellison said...

What a beautiful country we have!

Anonymous said...

Okay, I am heading to Nepal to earn extra money. So, I will follow the Obama-Biden victory plans online or when I get back in January.

I did have a final meeting at the Oval Room with K-street super consultants.

The verdict: Obama-Biden will win the WH, without breaking the sweat. Perry will dig his own funeral. Ditto for Bachman. Romney is the real threat (due to his experience), but thankfully GOP will never nominate him. Ergo, we are safe, inspire of the economy. This is their thinking.

What people need to do is *THINK*? Why would a voter vote for Bachman or Perry. They are not good at all. Think for a few minutes you will get it.

What can GOP do to encourage Paul Ryan, Daniels, and Christie?

Should GOP save energy/money and plan for 2016 instead?

There is simply no way - no way at all - that the GOP will win WH in 2012. I cannot find any simulation that actually goes the other way.

Thus, as I head out of town, remember: GOP cannot win WH in 2012. Mathematically, politically, economically, it cannot happen.

Steve Burri said...

At the Hit the Road Cafe, you can talk all the jack you want.

Hagar said...

Come back when the aspens turn in October.

Shouting Thomas said...

The gay shit is so important to you Althouse that it is the one issue you will censor over.

Because of your son.

This is not a rational issue for you Althouse.

You are in this solely to promote your son. The "rights" crap is just a convenient weapon that you've discovered works.

You're a completely self-interested crank when it comes to the gay crap, Althouse.

Carol_Herman said...

I see, America's Politico, you think you're reading tea leaves. When no living person on earth can foretell the future. At least Nepal isn't Guam. No threat of your arrival tipping anything over.

While a host of problems, ahead, NOT American made, could make Obama look like a genius?

I think the wind's blowing under Merkel's skirts. I think BORDERS can "erupt" in Europe. With disputes going to the coins that get accepted from foreigners when they cross space. And, time.

If Germany gets left holding the bag, instead? Then she needs to have a recovery like Japan.

That's not good news for Europe. Or all those banks who've hung paper out there ... thinking Americans will foot the bill. Instead? They'll be happy to take pennies on the dollar.

Then, we come to Beligium's gnomes. Their toy is the "blessed olympics." Which may not be so blessed, after all? Competing countries may develop the Han Chinese method of beating the crap out of the opposition?

While London, herself, may experience what happens to looters when they have no shoes ... and pad about their burnt out dwellings barefoot?

We haven't seen the end of things.

But Obama? Where did FDR lose anything by stalling when looking over the pond at Europe.

Believe what you want.

Perry won't be at the top of the GOP ticket, because Jeb "could be" the veep.

GOP lite may sell better than GOP conservatives ... with their religious zealots ... trying to pull into first place?

I also think Boehner's ass gets cooked.

edutcher said...

I do love America's Politico.

He's Baghdad Bob, Keith Ubermoronn, and Joe Biden in one package.

He apparently hasn't folded into prognostications that Herbert Obama's now polling at 49% approval among Hispanics.

Carol_Herman said...

Nice to have a traveling companion; and a little time off before school starts.

The magic of school starting, however, is that the kids are new ... Not easily pigeon-holed. And, once you feel your groove ... Teaching a new batch of students has its rewards.

It only gets sad, again, at the end. When you have to say goodbye.

And, each year the interim where you're teaching and where you're not ... goes by faster and faster.

Only kids think it takes a long, long time, to go from birthday to birthday. Or Christmas to Christmas.

Have all the things that grew at home have been harvested? Or are there pumpkins out there? Things that are growing now, for Fall's harvest?

Road trips are wonderful because you can carry along both conversations and songs. Have a nice trip.

Carol_Herman said...

I'd pay money to see Baghdad Bob "do" the news! He'd pull in a bigger audience than Al Sharpton gets.

edutcher said...

Carol, all you have to do is turn on one of the broadcast nets.

Same thing.

pm317 said...

Couldn't the Obamas go to the neighborhood pizza place and share a slice or two? Oh no, that would be unhealthy and causes obesity (mostly for MO it looks like.. and besides that diet is for poor people so MO like people could pile on them.)

Instead, she (you guessed it!) will want the $48 lobster, of course!

Or am I begrudging her her lobster? That can't be. I am a vegetarian.

Carol_Herman said...

Nope, edutcher. Baghdad Bob is in a class all to himself.

I even have a doll that was made to look like him. And, when I press a button, I can hear, again, his classics.

Always makes me laugh.

Don't turn on TV or the radio. Just like the Net. And, when I'm through, here. And, I go to my car. I listen to books on tape while I drive.

To each his or her own.

traditionalguy said...

"Run for the hills" was a metaphor, Professor.

It's safe to come back now.

Curious George said...

Adios mofo


wv: medledee: What comes before medledum

Sal said...

Namaste, mofo.

Peano said...

Hmmm ... how about that color cast?

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Coal Bank Pass.

Bruce Hayden said...

Colorado is one of the most beautiful states, at least the western half, esp. if you like mountains and the like. I can remember when we had "Colorful Colorado" on our plates.

I am getting home sick just looking at Ann's photos. I am in the NW corner of NV right now, and we have nice mountains outside my window. I have a picture of Job's Peak, rising 6K or so feet above the valley floor, as the background on my iPhone. But it is a somewhat isolated instance in this state. I drove from Las Vegas up here a couple of weeks ago, and that was 400 miles of some of the most desolate country in the nation. Maybe most desolate, since Wyoming does change color a bit. And, parts of California, etc. can be beautiful.

But the western half of Colorado is almost uniformly beautiful, with so many large mountains (52 rising over 14,000 feet, many more than any other state, even Alaska).

A trip up to Idaho/Montana next week (only about 1/4 or so of that state is mountainous - but that is where I am going), and then maybe back to Colorado for awhile.

Like I said, makes me home sick.

Bruce Hayden said...

Oh, and ignore AP. So far, he hasn't been as accurate as a broken clock so far, and Ann's photos are just too nice to ruin with discussing his liberal propaganda.

ricpic said...

Shooting down the road shooting down the road
Movement is the goad movement is the goad
And the world is such a load such a load such a load
There's nothing left but to go shooting down the Shooting down the shooting down the road.

rhhardin said...

Sow thistle staying home.

Irene said...

"Scale"

edutcher said...

Irene, The Blonde loves the smaller one (Poppy's mom?).

She had a poodle just that color when she was young.

Irene said...

edutcher, the small one is the puppy, "Poppy." The larger one standing behind her is "Rex." The third one, "Baci" is not in the photo. But he's my avatar.

We don't own the mother.

The Crack Emcee said...

Shouting Thomas,

The gay shit is so important to you Althouse that it is the one issue you will censor over.

Hit the road and pay a little visit to my place. Lot's of good stuff to chew on and, I swear, I never once ask you to wonder what you think about gay people. I don't even ask you what you think about black people. (I even did a post, a couple of days ago, stating how much I don't want to hear it,...) I tend not to compartmentalize us according to the dictates of the Frankfurt School (where Ann appears to have received her blogging training) which may not be as popular, but is definitely more intellectually consistent. I mean, Ann just won an award for bravery from Andrew Sullivan:

Need I say more?

Carol_Herman said...

Again. No cars on the road.

Did you have to wait for this magic moment? Or are cars so few? Where's the other traffic?

Carol_Herman said...

How do you "make" an Avatar?

(I know how puppies are born.)

Irene said...

Carol, when you go to your Google profile, click on "Edit Profile." At that page, there is a section called "Photograph" that allows one to upload a photo image.

Stephen A. Meigs said...

Freedom to sodomize is not a sexual freedom unless one considers sodomy sex (which I don't). Sodomy is not directly about reproduction--it's a chemical addiction in my opinion. So a better question would be whether one should have the freedom to addict people. Suppose sodomy is addictive. Then why shouldn't sodomizing be seen as a wrong to be treated with laws akin to those against illicit drugs? A society that has laws banning addictions (in the ordinary chemical sense) will have citizens that behave more according to their natural brain tendencies than according to the tendencies caused by the artificially introduced chemicals. The important thing is that people be free to behave according to their natural tendencies when those tendencies don't hurt others; that way, more refined natural tendencies will evolve. A society which discourages its citizenry from behaving according to unnatural tendencies caused by addictive chemicals (like those of semen after they have been absorbed by the digestive system) will tend to evolve much better than other societies, where people are totally free to be as druggy and screwed-up as they come to want to be. Actually, the situation is rather worse than mentioned. Since sodomy screws up sexual selection more than natural selection, and since it is mainly sexual selection that is responsible for the evolution of goodness and other higher moral traits in society, people will tend to evolve to be very selfish and bad in a society in which sodomy is common.

Sodomy is such a nefarious and vile tool for separating someone from their natural sexual tendencies, it would be a quite useful and mostly harmless assumption to treat anyone wanting sodomy as someone who originally was tricked or forced into it. In my opinion, no clear thinking person with understanding would voluntarily choose to be sodomized. Just as 80 year-olds should be protected from making reverse mortgages at 30% interest (because the natural assumption is that they were tricked or forced into it on account of senility), laws should outlaw sodomy (because the natural assumption is that anyone wanting to be sodomized wants it because they were tricked or forced into getting screwed up, e.g., because they were violently molested). Anyone truly interested in sexual freedom would see that forcible sodomy and rape being common makes sexual freedom very difficult, and if enlightened would try to discourage sodomy because allowing people to choose to be sodomized empowers rapists and forcible sodomizers. Rape isn't very useful to rapists if it doesn't have a prospect of turning into something longer-lasting. And anti-sodomizer laws might be somewhat directly useful, for example, in making it easier for people who have been forcibly sodomized to prove that the sodomizer committed a crime even if she can't prove the sodomy wasn't asked for, and in making it dangerous and thus less selfishly useful for sodomizers to sodomize people.

Freedom to sodomize is not like freedom to choose religion, either. People believing in good religions presumably evolve better than people believing in bad religions, but society deciding what is a good religion discourages people from evolving to choose the best religion, which would be dreadful even if society could be trusted to choose rightly what's good religion. The only thing that evolves better in a society that doesn't discourage sodomy is anti-sodomy defenses, all quite useless to the extent sodomy and chemical addiction is discouraged (unless from external countries rampaging hordes gain control and sodomize most everybody, a very mild consideration with today's lethal weaponry). And bad sodomizing unlike bad religion is unchangeable and easily defined, so there would be no need to trust society to understand what it be. All sodomizing is reprehensible and can be defined simply as "putting semen into a digestive system".

Carol_Herman said...

What's with this "sodomize" schick?

I always thought it was how Greek men preferred it. Since it meant their females wouldn't get pregnant.

As to "how" men love other men, I doubt anyone who isn't homosexual would even even know about that stuff.

All you need to know is that attitudes have changed.

And, getting beaten up over sexual identity gets frowned on by kids, today.

Gosh, when was there a break through?

I remember seeing "The Boys In The Band," on Broadway. Where the closet door began to open up.

This is a good thing.

Given that homosexual men had to figure out there were others in their own families hiding out inside that closet.

Oh. And, that's how I think Mark Felt worked his "trick" with Woodward.

Deep Throat, indeed.

Ann Althouse said...

Sodomy includes oral sex too, Stephen. You're saying no to that too? If not, why not? If you are... well, okay. Enjoy!

edutcher said...

Irene said...

edutcher, the small one is the puppy, "Poppy." The larger one standing behind her is "Rex." The third one, "Baci" is not in the photo. But he's my avatar.

Well, The Blonde likes all your pups.

She just can't lift any of them.

PS The small one is Poppy? Wow! She looks like one of The Blonde's dogs, Bonbon, she had when she was a teenager.

Irene said...

edutcher, Poppy still is very small: she weighs about 6 pounds (up from 4.75 pounds when we brought her home two weeks ago).

Dust Bunny Queen said...

Have all the things that grew at home have been harvested? Or are there pumpkins out there? Things that are growing now, for Fall's harvest?

Fall is in the air. Still very hot during the day (upper 90's) but getting cooler at night (low 40's). Cool enough to want the lightweight down comforter.

Waiting anxiously for the bulk of the tomatoes to ripen on the vine. Way too much eggplant this year (learned a lesson). Almost ripe cantaloupes (hope they make it). For winter. Acorn squash and Butternut still growing on the ground.

Yes. We do live in a beautiful country.

Stephen A. Meigs said...

Yes, what goes by the name of oral sex I also consider sodomy (oral sodomy is the term I prefer because it is not sex). It does seem slightly less gross than rectal sodomy, and is obviously much less gross if swallowing is not involved, but still, it admits addictive chemicals into the digestive system (and the oral mucosa is slightly capable of absorbing many chemicals, as in drugs administered sublingualy, probably because the mouth being slightly able to absorb chemicals protects people from swallowing tasteless chemicals in plants that have immediate toxic noticeably unpleasant effects on the brain), where they may reasonably be supposed to be absorbed to some extent, so oral sodomy seems imprudent (even if HPV weren't arguably nowadays the leading cause of oral cancer, which kills about 8000 Americans per year).

That dizziness causes nausea that can lead to vomiting (even if caused by inner ear problems) is strong evidence that oral sodomy is addictive. Dizziness is the sort of incapacitating thing that rape drugs might be supposed to cause, so it is a sign that one has been affected by oral sodomy, making vomiting appropriate. I figure that's why girls like to thrash their head about while dancing so much--makes them attuned to their natural susceptibility to dizziness, so they can know what level of dizziness to beware of.

I think oral sodomy has something to do with why I hate pretzels so much, too. I figure the baking soda on the outside of the pretzel probably saponifies the oil on the outside of the pretzel, giving the pretzel a taste of free fatty acid. Prostaglandins in semen are considered fatty acid. So I wonder whether pretzels aren't rather designed to trick people into thinking that the free fatty acid taste is nothing to be concerned about (after all, the inside of the pretzel tastes harmless enough). Yuck! I hate the taste of pretzels.

Dust Bunny Queen said...

Alrighty then.

I vote Stephen Meigs as one of the weirder posters that we have had in a while.

Pretzels = Semen ??? Really.

Thrashing heads while dancing? Girls are naturally attuned to being dizzy? (Well, I might be tempted to grant that last one)

somefeller said...

I think oral sodomy has something to do with why I hate pretzels so much, too.

I think we have a new quote for the masthead.

Dust Bunny Queen said...

I think oral sodomy has something to do with why I hate pretzels so much, too.

I, on the other hand like pretzels. I really miss Mr. Salty.

........wait....that didn't sound quite right.

Anonymous said...

At the airport I got into an argument with someone. I wondered aloud to a TV news report that GOP is going to lose, no matter what. The guy said, hey are you crazy, the economy is not good. He pointed to the story on his iPad, http://blogs.reuters.com/james-pethokoukis/2011/08/19/obama-faces-worst-case-2012-scenario/.

I told him, no matter what circumstance, GOP will lose. The thing is that to win the GOP has to have a winning ticket, which it will never have.

What is the winning ticket:

- Someone at the top who demonstrates 100% passion for all things American. Love for our culture, our science, our future, our problems, etc.

- Someone who has proven good results at all levels.

- Someone who has a plan for recovery, which we all think is a good idea.

- Someone who does not scare us, make us feel we are living in 1900/dark ages.

- Etc.

There is no one in the GOP like that. Jon Huntsman and Mitt Romney on some occasions show these skills, but there hope to winning the nomination is like my hope for becoming a super K-street consultant. It is not going to happen.

Ergo: Barack and Michelle Obama in WH till Jan. 2017.

How do you like your apples, now?

Off to the boarding gate...

Dust Bunny Queen said...

How do you like your apples, now

Caramel apple pie sounds pretty good about now.

Heart_Collector said...

Cool pic, so vivid it almost looks like it could be fake.

Carol_Herman said...

Betting window's open. Buy a ticket.

Right now we have a full season of guessing games, ahead.

Who'd have thought Dubya could win? Let alone twice? And, the second time Florida didn't get kicked into high gear.

I'm picking Jeb as veep, ahead. To cure the potential of a "Florida toss up" problem. But what do I know?

I just decided to guess.

Don't think Palin gets selected, either. But through it all, I expect Trump to keep showing up ... showing how a candidate "could do it." While Mitt didn't.

Carol_Herman said...

Ann, you're kidding me. BJ's are included in "sodomy?"

Why wasn't this stated clearer ... when Bill Clinton made BJ's sound so "collegial." Something women did in college. Even back when The Group (1950's), were still hanging the wedding sheets out the window?

Plus, there's Belle Barth's joke.

"Nothing harder to do than scream "it hoits. It hoits." While the groom has tied his ankles to the bedposts. On the wedding night of a broad's second marriage."

Carol_Herman said...

Maybe, what this road needs is cars with chains on their tires? Then? There'd be cars on the road.

Not a "lonesome trail?"

Peter Hoh said...

According to the news, rebels are closing in on Ghadafi.

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