Parents are sitting at kitchen tables and wondering how they’re going to make ends meet: How they’re going to buy back-to-school clothes this week, and still pay last week’s doctor bill. How they’re going to make this months [sic] mortgage payment, and still cover next semester’s tuition. And whether they’re going to be able to save for retirement or just have enough left over for a night at the movies.

• A $6000 road bike to ride during a single photo op, or a good used car to drive for four years or until it stops running.
  
  That six thousand dollars can only be spent one way, friends. You want to know the strata of used cars? $6000 and up, or anything you buy from a new car dealer is a good used car; anything $1000 and up that you can buy from a used car lot is a questionable used car, anything over $200 that you get from the classifieds which runs for a year or maybe two if you're not afraid of brakeless driving is a fair used car, and anything you buy for $49 as salvage with the promise you'll fix it up is a poor used car.
  
  
• A properly-tailored two piece suit, or an entire wardrobe for the children this year.
  
  
• A flattering haircut by a trendy stylist-to-the-stars-and-politicos, or two vacations with the family outside the state, both of which do not involve camping.
  
  
• Spending $300,000 to fly to the other coast in a luxury 747, or paying off the mortgage over 30 years, with full interest, for a single home in an inner suburb to a city in the middle of the country.
  
  
• The Swiss chalet, or everything your poor little heads can dream.
  
  

President Bush glossed over some complicating realities in Iraq, Afghanistan and the home front in arguing the case Americans are safer and his opponent cannot deliver.

On Iraq, Bush talked of a 30-member alliance standing shoulder to shoulder with the United States, masking the fact that U.S. troops are pulling by far most of the weight. On Afghanistan and its neighbors, he gave an accounting of captured or killed terrorists, but did not address the replenishment of their ranks — or the still-missing Osama bin Laden.

• Insecurity in Microsoft products, or the purported superiority of Linux.
  
  
• The ability of movie companies and comic book companies to maintain a profitable, lasting set of fan-appealing franchises when faced with misguided efforts, like The Hulk, and underappreciated-but-expensive films like Daredevil.
  
  
• Lara Croft or BloodRayne: Which video game babe is hotter?
  
  
• Cats who insist upon sticking their tails in my schooner of beer.
  
  
• Those burps where Blogger (or other blogging software) makes you think you will, or you actually lose a post. What's up with that? Did Carnivore eat it?
  
  
• The mere annoyances that are Spam, Adware, telemarketing phone calls, junk mail, and print or broadcast advertising of things I don't like--annoyances that demand FEDERAL GOVERNMENT ATTENTION NOW!
  
  
• Scofflaws who don't buckle their safety belts. Why is this not a Federal crime yet, punishable with jail time?
  
  
• Women bloggers who ficklely start and stop their blogs, over and over again, challenging other bloggers who want to keep their blogrolls fresh (This means you, Lucas, du Toit, VKate, et al.)
  
  
• Those damn Chinese butterflies who keep beating their wings and starting hurricanes.
  
  
• A federal study to determine how many types of information wild moonbats can communicate through their barks and grunts.
  
  
• Introduction of federal tax assistance and incentives to bloggers unafraid of the beautiful blink tag.

Austrian historians are ridiculing California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger for telling the Republican National Convention that he saw Soviet tanks in his homeland as a child and left a "Socialist" country when he moved away in 1968.

Recalling that the Soviets once occupied part of Austria in the aftermath of World War II, Schwarzenegger told the convention on Tuesday: "I saw tanks in the streets. I saw communism with my own eyes."

No way, historians say, challenging Schwarzenegger's knowledge of postwar history -- if not his enduring popularity among Austrians who admire him for rising from a penniless immigrant to the highest official in America's most populous state.

"It's a fact -- as a child he could not have seen a Soviet tank in Styria," the southeastern province where Schwarzenegger was born and raised, historian Stefan Karner told the Vienna newspaper Kurier.

Schwarzenegger, now a naturalized U.S. citizen, was born on July 30, 1947, when Styria and the neighboring province of Carinthia belonged to the British zone. At the time, postwar Austria was occupied by the four wartime allies, which also included the United States, the Soviet Union and France.

The Soviets already had left Styria in July 1945, less than three months after the end of the war, Karner noted.

The spirit of Wendell Willkie doesn't get invoked much by Republicans for one big reason: He lost. But there was Dick Cheney at the convention Wednesday night, harkening back to Franklin D. Roosevelt's opponent in the 1940 election, and how Willkie, though running against him, nevertheless supported FDR's foreign policy. Cheney did leave out one small detail: Willkie supported FDR's stance toward the war in Europe because he agreed with it.

Before we get to the (ha!) insightful stuff, let me note something:

1 hour, 45 minutes.

46 posts.

Who's got the hardest-working blog in the business?

• I'm not a Whitman fan.
  
  
• I'm afraid a lot of people would think it was an allusion to Dead Poets' Society.
  
  
• This is no occasion for an elegy; I hope our journey has only reached the midway point.

• That health care costs for average Ill-annoyans is rising every month.
  
  
• That anyone in southern Ill-annoy can understand long term employment trends.

While I'm (sort of) on this topic, why doesn't the United States address the Afghan opium trade by just buying the stuff up? Presumably, farmers would be just as happy to sell their poppies to us, and that would keep them off the market, as well as depriving bad guys of a revenue source. Am I missing something here?

• Drug legalization. I bet there are a number of New York tourists right now who would like an over-the-counter opiate to help them over their hangovers. Some of us in the heartland, too.
  
  
• Increased demand for intact poppies. The VFW could switch from paper forget-me-nots to real ones. The United States could use poppies in the official currency paper, although this might lead to more people licking their dollar bills (although it's common practice in the Noggle household to lick money for the trace amounts of cocaine rumored to be in the bills). People could say I love you with dozens of poppies. However, until drugs are legalized, the government will strictly hamstring your FTD florist.

• Gary George
• Tommy Thompson
• Tony Earl
• Herb Kohl (Cole, okay, a stretch)
• Paul Ryan
• Michael Ellis
• Gerald Kleczka

One reason I could never be a Republican is their squeamish view of the world. Everything is dirty, or evil, or forbidden. I tried to watch the start of the convention with an open mind, and wasn't even irked by the lone theme of the first night -- Sept. 11 -- as if the American people are too dumb to absorb two ideas in an evening.

During the montage of recruiting-ad-style tributes to the military, I tried not to be bothered by a guns-and-glory view of war that went out of style after Vietnam.

Then they sang the Air Force Fight Song. I've always loved that song, with its thrilling opening line, "Off we go, into the wild blue yonder/Climbing high into the sun. . . . '' Then they got to the verse, "Down we dive, spouting our flame from under/Off with one helluva roar!"

Only they didn't sing "helluva roar." They sang "terrible roar.'' My guess is, a little bowdlerization for the Right Wing, with its horror of profanity, Harry Potter, gay marriage and all matters Satanic and things hellish, or even helluvaish. It's a philosophy for babies.

1. Kicks Bob Greene while Greene's starting to get up from being down.
   
   
2. Deploys the rhetorical flourish of so-called to earn his pay as a wordsmith.

Debbie just hit the wall
she never had it all
one Prozac a day
husband's a CPA
her dreams went out the door
when she turned twenty-four
only been with one man
what happen to her plan?

She was gonna be an actress
she was gonna be a star
she was gonna shake her ass
on the hood of Whitesnake’s car
her yellow SUV is now the enemy
looks at her average life
and nothing has been alright

Bruce Springstein, Madonna
way before Nirvana
there was U2 and Blondie
and music still on MTV
her two kids in high school
they tell her that she’s uncool
but she still preoccupies
with 19, 19, 1985

EURO chief Romano Prodi last night hailed Britain’s haul of Olympic gold as a triumph — for the European Union.

And he warned our athletes will have to fly the EU flag as well as the Union Jack at Beijing in 2008.

That would mean 800m and 1500m champion Kelly Holmes and boxing sensation Amir Khan would be battling for Brussels as much as Britain.

Mr Prodi turned the Athens games into a political football, boasting that our bag of 30 medals helped the EU trounce America and China.

The West defeated the East, the Islamic Crescent, and Africa!

Elderly Schenectady (NY) lawyer Romolo Versaci has filed a $100,000 defamation suit against Diane C. Richie, an unemployed social worker and widow with two children. Versaci claims -- and Richie admits -- that she called him a "so-called attorney" on a SchenectadyNY.info message board. ...

"America today has used all its force, as well as the help of others, to fight Islam under the so-called war on terror, which is nothing but a vicious crusade against Muslims," the statement said.

• Another Monday, another 5 unsolicited credit card offers, including 3 separate campaigns from Citibank. Gentlemen, it is my distinct pleasure to return your business reply envelopes with the terms of your offer, but not application. I consider it my small part to keep first class postal rates down and to raise your cost per customer acquisition for these campaigns.
  
  
• A plea for money from George Bush. Look, George, I've given money, we're probably going to give up time and lawnspace for the campaign, but if you want more cash, you're going to have to send a picture of your daughters.
  
  For this gambit to be effective, make sure that's addressed to Mr. Brian and not Mrs. Heather (or, as she might be again known shortly after reading this post, Miss HLI, in which case I won't have any money to give anyway).
  
  
• An offer for AOL 9.0 Optimized, which proclaims right on the box, Block Spam and Web Pop-Ups. As someone who's logged into AOL 9.0 on a dial-up recently, I certainly notice the oversight that new customers won't: Web Pop-Ups doesn't say a damn thing about the six or ten AOL offers that display whenever you try to log in or log out. Those? Still in there.
  
  An overly expensive dial-up ISP that delivers its own ads to enhance my (slow) browsing experience? Throwing this out unopened is too good for this small box.

Earlier this month, Malone, 59, was summoned to his doctor's office. He listened as the doctor delivered the stunning news: He is HIV negative. The doctor acknowledged the error, writing in a letter dated Aug. 4: "As his primary care provider, I take full responsibility."

"He told me, 'We made a very big mistake. We did not do our job,' " said Malone, who is gay and has lost friends to AIDS. "I said, 'You mean to tell me that all you have to say is you are sorry? Sorry that I lived for all this time believing I was going to die?' "

His rent was paid in part by a county health program. Project Open Hand delivered free meals. A nurse visited him at home every two weeks.

His misdiagnosis is rare but undisputed and shows the far-reaching damage wrought by medical mistakes and the potential for flaws in burdened health care systems.

Officials at the Oakland Department of Veterans Affairs' outpatient clinic where he was treated admit the mistake and have launched an investigation into what went wrong and how the error was perpetuated year after year. VA officials were taken by surprise by the Aug. 4 letter in which the doctor accepted blame and admitted the error. Malone's physician, Dr. Richard Karp, was not available to comment as the case is under investigation.

Karen Pridmore, a spokeswoman for VA's Northern California Health Care System, which has eight clinics and a medical center and serves more than 65, 000 patients, said Malone had arrived at the clinic in 1996 with lab results from an outside testing firm in Southern California. Those results showed he was HIV positive. The VA did its own confirmatory HIV test on Malone and found he was negative.