Outrageous Vulnerabilities
It's Still The Economy, Stupid
In Week Before Labor Day, Pointless
Palin's No Shrinking Violet
Danger Signals
Change vs. Change
Obama Off-Balance from Palin Flip-Flops on O'Reilly
Distant Drums At Sarah's Party
Martha's Big Adventure - Enquiring Minds Want to Know
Game Changer
The Unexamined Life
The Grand Old Party Line
JFK: Democrats' Role Model?
Palin, Pregnancy And The Pulpit
The Big 5-0
What Do Women Want Now?
Farewell To An American Hero
Palin-Bashing Press Keeps Swinging And Missing
Want Real Change? Quit Nominating Lawyers!
Harper's Index
Don't They Have Birth Control Up In Alaska?
Professor Bush's Economic Nostrum
Saving The GOP And The Unbearable Lightness of Being Sarah Palin
Building The Bridge
Married Liberals With Children
Mosdirection In Minnesota
Logical Consequencse
Which Ticket Really Will Deliver Change Voters Want?
Palin's Problem
Game On: Let The Race Begin
The Rush Is On For Palin, GOP
The Role of A Lifetime
What's So Terrific About Mccain's Palin Pick?
Why Obama's "Community Organizer" Days Are A Joke
A.S.P. -- After Sarah Palin
Stick With Sarah
McCain-Palin Will Flush Big-Spending GOP Ways
Most Sarcastic Campaign Ever
Report From A Forgotten War (5th and Last in a Series)
My Brain Tumor
Don't 'Misunderestimate' Palin's Power
Words On Words: How Do You Say 'Hypocrisy' In Romney-Speak?
On Shooting Taggers: Why Conservatives And Liberals Differ
Mccain Wants Moose Hunter In White House
Me For President
Welcome Back Dad
A Human-Resources Handbook
Palin's Gender Alone Won't Sway Women Voters
The Old John McCain
Palin's State Reaps The Windfall Profits McCain Decries
Finally, We Care About A Teen Pregnancy
McCain's Best Way
Media To Republicans: We're Sorry
Executive Experience Is a Joke -- Opinion
What Standards?
Blind Defense of Koran Abrogates Reality
We've Come A Long Way, Baby
Are You Better Off ?
The Invisible President



In Sweet July, The Domb Stuff Doesn't Matter
Garrison Keillor 7/15/2008
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Summer nights! The fragrant dark descends, the night creatures chitter and chirrup, and we linger on the porch, a little wine in the glass, children coming and going, and we inhale the sweetness of life. In Pasadena, people are lined up outside a bank, hoping to get their money out before it goes belly-up, and Mr. McCain's friend Mr. Gramm says we are a nation of whiners complaining about a recession that is only mental, but we are engulfed in summer and don't notice. We're sitting on the porch, inhaling the breeze from the trees, and we are American optimists.

We grew up with cheapo gasoline and our children won't and anything you hear about rolling back prices at the pump is just election-year blather. Supply is not rising to meet demand, what with China and India booming, and that drives the price up: You learned about this in the seventh grade. So our kids will have to deal with new realities, which they can manage better than we can, and when gas goes to seven and eight and ten dollars a gallon, they'll roll with it.

A fellow father on the porch says he's taking his girls to Guatemala in July on a church mission though it isn't the Guatemalans he wants to minister
to -- he wants his children to spend a week in a village whose inhabitants live on a fraction of what we do and aren't messing around with Facebook and YouTube so much because they have gardens to tend and chickens to butcher. He simply wants his girls to see this and know how privileged we Americans are. We got cheap bananas and coffee out of Guatemala by supporting a vicious regime that suppressed dissent, and for Chiquita Banana, brave people were tortured and shot, which is something that Adams and Jefferson didn't foresee, and yet a band of Lutherans is welcome to visit a rural village and sleep on mats for a week and eat what the locals eat. What a beautiful world!

In the sweetness of July, the dumb cover of The New Yorker showing Barack in Muslim garb doesn't matter, nor does Mr. McCain's sweet moment when he was asked if it is fair that insurance will pay for Viagra and not for birth control pills and he stammered like a schoolboy. Politicians have powerful response reflexes that pick up on a key word in the question and play back a practiced response, but Mr. McCain blushed and winced, a lovely vulnerable moment that in the languors of July went unappreciated.

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