Have a nice Valentine's Day/Friday the 13th combo weekend.

I'd never noticed the collision of the 2 dreaded days before 2009:

Because it's a risky place out there. For example, I was out driving, hundreds of miles from home on Friday the 13th, and I blithely made a right turn and drove a half a block before I saw the oncoming traffic in my lane. I quickly made another right turn at the corner, and immediately saw the police car lights in my rear view mirror. The cop — with his beautiful blue eyes — was very handsome — very heart-of-the-heartland handsome. I effused "I'm so sorry." He asked us where we were going. I didn't wisecrack, "the wrong way, apparently."

We said where we were going, and afterward, I wondered what the hell difference did it make where we were going? Nosy cop. Nosy handsome cop. Nosy adorable cop with brilliant blue eyes. I'm theorizing that he asked because the thing is to ask anything to get the driver talking so that words might be slurred, incoherence demonstrated, or alcohol smelled. It's not a speeding ticket he'd like to give me, it's a DUI. And maybe the whole point of making that street 1-way is to net drunk drivers. Why was the cop right there? I bet every 10 minutes, somebody goes the wrong way at that turn, each one a potential DUI, and that was a net that I slithered through. But maybe Mr. Handsome Blue-Eyed Cop let me off because he liked the place we said we were going. And I got lucky that way on Friday the 13th.

No, that was not my first post about falling in love with Meade. This was. No, actually, this. Or was it "Record nails broken in car crash." No, it was "Althouse on the road":



In the comments, AJ Lynch said: "Althouse is...looking for love in all the wrong places. Heh. Be safe!" Yes, be very careful! You never know where your next wrong turn is or who might come tromping through the brush:

Did Gingrich win?

I'm hearing reports that he's the projected winner (in South Carolina), but it looks even with 1% reporting.

ADDED: The link above goes to CNN. Here's Wapo.

MORE SHOCKING NEWS: Heidi Klum and Seal are getting divorced! 

AND: I know, I know. Exit polls. But remember exit polls in 2004? Here's what I wrote that strange November evening:

Yes, I care a lot about the outcome of the election, and I'm sitting here waiting for the news to come in, sampling the dribbled out exit polls, and fretting. But at the same time, I feel complete assurance that as soon as the outcome is known, I'll fully accept it. Either man will make a decent enough President. I think Bush deserves to continue in office, but if it is to be Kerry, Kerry can handle the job too.... It is equanimity that flows through me. Time for a nice glass of win, a plate of pasta with Bolognese sauce, and a calm absorption of reality.

UPDATE: "A nice glass of win" -- ah, so hope does live on! Time for a nice glass of wine and toast to hope! A glass to be refilled later, perhaps, in a quenching of sorrow!

ANOTHER UPDATE: 10:53 p.m. Maybe I am going to get that nice glass of win after all. I'm really surprised. I let those exit polls affect me. Then I called up my sister in Florida and ended up talking with her for a long time, just watching the numbers on the TV screen with the sound off, so I wasn't getting any punditizing and wasn't drawing conclusions about much of anything. I got off the phone, and it took a while for me to absorb it, but eventually I got the message that everything was trending toward Bush.

IN THE COMMENTS: AJ Lynch said:

Seal got pissed when Heidi asked him for an open marriage with Newt?

RELOCATED FROM ALTHOUSE2: Jean Shrimpton today.

"I’m not sure contentment is obtainable and I find the banality of modern life terrifying. I sometimes feel I’m damaged goods."

COMMENTS (Relocated):

rhhardin said...
Life isn't banal if you have a dog.

MAY 13, 2011 3:06:00 PM CDT
k*thy said...
More times, lately, I find comfort ordinary and, somewhat, anonymous.

MAY 13, 2011 3:17:00 PM CDT
AJ Lynch said...
Her frowning face physically resembles what she said in the quote.

MAY 13, 2011 4:54:00 PM CDT
AJ Lynch said...
I wonder why your blog got singled out?

MAY 13, 2011 4:54:00 PM CDT
traditionalguy said...
If Althouse was singled out, it was not for banality of modern life. My guess is that this downtime is only a test of Obama's new Political Emergency Preparedness System.

MAY 13, 2011 5:58:00 PM CDT
David said...
Being old is not too bad if being young was never your principal identity.

MAY 13, 2011 6:04:00 PM CDT
tim maguire said...
The banality of modern life is often boring, but terrifying?

Drama queen.

MAY 13, 2011 6:23:00 PM CDT

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single blogger in possession of a good vortex, must be in want of a husband."

From the comments on last night's post with Bob & Mickey commenting on Ann & Meade.

Sara said:

When Ann & Meade marry, that will make 9 couples I know or that I've had some online contact with who met online and got married.

Ann, if it helps with all the naysayers, the other 8 are all happy and three have been married more than 10 years now....

Theobromophile said:

Ditto to Sara. People meet online all the time. I know a bunch of eHarmony folks, and my mum met my stepdad on Match.com back in the '90s. At least a comment section of a blog presumes a common interest.

Yes, we need to make a big distinction between the on-line version of what was once the personal ads in the newspaper. I think what is getting attention in my case isn't that we "met on line," because that's not unusual at all. In fact, I don't even think it would get a reaction if 2 commenters got together. (Why not email a commenter you like? You might end up in love in real life.) What is stirring people up is that a blogger is marrying one of her commenters, perhaps especially where the blogger is the woman and the commenter is the man.

Hoosier Daddy said:

I met Mrs. Hoosier in a bar while we were in college. We did a couple of tequila shots together, danced to The Fine Young Cannibals got engaged and married two years later. It's been 18 years of wedded blitz ever since.

AJ Lynch said:

80-90% of married couples met in a bar. Many have trouble admitting it.

Hoosier Daddy said:

Not only do I admit it, I wear it as a badge of honor and distinction. We had a rockin good time, made out in the parking lot and 20 years later we're still together.

All those fairy tales about romantic hookups is bullshit. Two years later she's telling the judge what a cocksucker he is and she ends up with the house, car and is banging the pool boy.

Yeah, how are you supposed to meet somebody? What is the officially approved-of way?

Michael Hasenstab said:

Gosh, you youngsters and your interwebs, meeting online and all.

I'm so old school that I met my wife inline. We were lined up (in person, not via computer queue), waiting to get into the same place early one Saturday morning. We talked (in person, not via some electronic thingie, this was pre-email), exchanged names (using pen and paper, this was pre-PDA) and telephone numbers (to our home phones, this was pre-cellular).

One of us called the other, then the other called one of us a few days later. Then we met once and both explained why we had no, zero, nada, bupkus, zip, nunca intentions of marrying because we both greatly preferred the single life.

We met a second time and part way through that date fell in love and decided to marry as soon as practical. And we did. And decades later remain blissfully married.

When the sparks are ignited, the method or media doesn't matter. A great match is a great match, no matter how it was achieved.

And a few friends and relatives did ask "Does he/she know the guy/girl?" Their questions didn't matter. We already had the answer.

Ha ha. By the way, from my experience, I'd say that the conviction that singlehood is best and I'm never getting married is, oddly enough, breaks through to the shortest path to a decision to marry.

Peter hoh said:

I like the way that "commenter" sounds a bit like "commoner."

It sounds like something out of a Victorian comedy of manners. "She's marrying a commoner? Oh my!"

Paul Zrimsek said:

"She's marrying a commoner? Oh my!"

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single blogger in possession of a good vortex, must be in want of a husband.

"How is the government going to 'get its money back' if the [auto bailout] money has been spent and the firms are bankrupt?"

Mickey Kaus asks.

1) How is the government going to "get its money back" if the money has been spent and the firms are bankrupt? Only by liquidation, it would seem. So does the bailout deal eliminate the option of restructuring (as an ongoing enterprise) under the aegis of the bankruptcy court? Either the firms are saved under the "czar," or they are liquidated, apparently. 2) The big "stick" is to kill the firms, then. Isn't that too big a stick? Like a nuclear weapon is too big a stick? Come April 29th, if the choice is to approve a half-assed "restructuring" plan that has maybe a 35% chance of succeeding, or to kill General Motors, there's going to be an awful lot of pressure not to kill General Motors, no? The threat is so big it pressures the auto czar, not the executives, investors and union members. What's needed is an intermediate threat that's more credible. How about empowering the auto czar to declare the companies' labor contracts null and void? And to indefinitely delay payment of all executive salaries and bonuses? That would get the "stakeholders" attention, maybe. 3) Shouldn't there be a different "czar" for each firm? Having a single czar for the whole industry muffles what might be salutary competitive pressures. Maybe Chrysler's workers are so desperate they'll give up more in terms of pay and work rules than Ford's workers. Shouldn't that sort of choice be encouraged? Dueling "czars" would encourage this viability-enhancing reverse solidarity. ...

Good questions! As to #3, can someone explain why 3 car companies with 1 head isn't an antitrust problem?

Also, Mickey, don't say "auto czar." It's either car czar or auto autocrat. Poetry's important when everything is going to hell.

IN THE COMMENTS: AJ Lynch offers: Motor City Mogul. Campy says: Detroit Despot.

I love Blogger!

You may have noticed that the comments box now appears at the bottom of the post page, looking very spiffy and making reading a comments thread much nicer.

But there's another improvement, the main improvement I've been hoping for. When the comments go over 200, they will appear on the post page once you add a comment. You won't have to click to comment and then click "newer." There is a downside, which is that you have to actually post a comment to see more than 200 comments.

ADDED: Oh, no, there's a problem. You have to post to see the comments beyond 200, but then you only see the comments on the group of 200 comments that your post fits, and then it's hard to see how you can ever get to any sets of 200 comments in between the first and the last. I don't think Blogger is thinking about posts that get more than 200 comments. How often does that happen (other than by some disastrous accumulation of spam)?

IN THE COMMENTS: AJ Lynch says:

It's very possible the new format will work fine for those posts done after the format change was introduced. Capiche?

Ah! I hope so. Quick, post a whole lot of comments here so we can find out. Post anything to get it up over 200 so with can test this theory.

UPDATE: Well, we pushed this up over 200 as a test, and, sadly, the news is bad. You won't see the over-200 comments unless you post, and at that point, you will only see the comments in the group of 200 to which your comment belongs. O, Blogger, why do you torment me this way?

UPDATE 2: Here's Blogger's explanation of the new function, recently moved out of Blogger Beta:

The embedded comment form is more convenient for your readers because they can use it to post a comment immediately, without clicking over to a different page. It also looks better, since it matches your blog’s style and colors.

That's true, but unfortunately, the problems we've encountered going beyond 200 comments make this unworkable for me. Fortunately, I can now see that this is an option, and going into "settings," I was able to go back to the old style.

"Barack Obama, Socialist?"

Asks Power Line, with evidence that Obama ran for the Illinois Senate in 1996 as a member of the New Party. Was he a member or was he simply endorsed by the Party, which had a strategy of endorsing Democratic Party candidates who were sufficiently left wing?

In any case, I don't think it's right to call the New Party "socialist." I remember this party. One of the founders was UW lawprof Joel Rogers. They presented themselves not as socialists, but as left-leaning and progressive. I realize that for right wingers that counts as "socialist," but let's not be inflammatory.

I found an article in the LA Times, January 27, 1997, called "Life of the Party, Joel Rogers, Recipient of a MacArthur 'Genius' Grant, Helps Guide the Fledgling New Party and its Campaign to Provide Educational Opportunity and a Living Wage." (No link, because the LA Times website is inadequate.) Excerpt:

Imagine, [Joel Rogers] says, that in 2000 the Democrats run Al Gore for president and the Republicans offer, say, millionaire Steve Forbes....

A mad taxer might, instead, "vote his values" by poking the ballot next to Gore's name--not where he is listed as a Democrat, but beside his New Party nomination...

Either way, the vote would count toward the candidate's total. And the candidate, says Rogers, would get a sharp reminder that a certain percentage of his votes came from people who think a certain way--like New Party "progressives," for instance.

Which leads to the question of just what this New Party stands for, and how popular its "populism" would really be....

"If you ask, 'Do you think all kids should have an equal start in life,' 80% of the population would agree with you," he says.

Next he shoots out a rhetorical filament about declining incomes and wage disparity--reflecting the party's vehement support of "living wage" campaigns.

"People really don't think it's fair to work full time, 2,000 hours a year, and get such lousy pay that they can't even raise a kid on it," he says. "That has electoral promise, that sentiment. . . . You can't inflict this much damage on people's expectations and not see it show up somewhere in voter volatility and anger.

"When you say, 'It doesn't seem fair that Michael Eisner makes $ 75,000 an hour,' people respond to that."

The party also supports progressive taxation, international workers rights, environmental protection, urban renewal and the public financing of elections....

If anything bugs Rogers, though, it is the suggestion that his dream is a new playground for political hobbyists and pinko pointy heads.

"I think it would be unfair to characterize it as just a marketing strategy for old defeated socialists. . . ," Rogers says. "It attaches much less weight to the state--much less than even conventional liberalism."

It's not fair to call the New Party "socialist," and it's really not fair to paint Obama as a crypto-socialist today because of his association with it.

IN THE COMMENTS: One of my favorite commenters, Chip Ahoy, calls this "Simply the most incoherent post I've ever read here." He goes on:

Why not call a socialist a socialist? Don't tell me not to call a spade a spade or a club a club, I'll call them as I see them.

Everything about this post speaks to socialism, jealousy, income redistribution, class war. Joel Roberts [sic], whether or not he likes to hear it, is a socialist. There's nothing else to make of peeling off the most left of the left.

I didn't bother with the word clouds presented here earlier, but I recall hearing the word "fairness" a lot by both Obama and Biden. Now there's a word that grates. There. is. no. such. thing ◯ <--- emphatic period. What is an attempt to achieve fairness through social engineering if not a yearning for socialism? Bah. This was all so very interesting the first time we read about it in Animal Farm. Yes, Obama is socialist. In his bones. As socialist as allowed in American politics with himself at the control levers. Joel Rogers is attempting to stretch that allowance. I'm in poor spirit this morning. I fumbled boiling water and burned my leg. So I'm really not in any mood to be instructed how to redefine my native language. I spent too much time learning these words [than] to have somebody I don't know tell me they actually mean something else so that it becomes easier to slip proven-to-fail economic policies into American politics under another name.

I'm sorry you burned your leg, Chip. And I'm not speaking to the question whether Rogers is a socialist. But I think the New Party project was meant to be more mainstream ... left, but mainstream. I think candidates that were endorsed by the party, as it followed its supposedly clever strategy, were just very liberal Democrats.

AJ Lynch, another commenter with a fine reputation here, calls Chip's post "the best comment of the month." He adds:

I suggest you let them sink in Ann.

Peter snarks:

Let's not be silly. Of course Obama is a socialist!

The real question is this: Is Ann Althouse a socialist?

I'm just a humble citizen of Madison, Wisconsin, an observer of political things who is not herself political. I come from the world of art, and I sojourned into law, where I did not really belong, but I got ensnared in a career here, and blogging is my reemergence as the real person that I truly am. I have met many interesting people here in Madison, including many lefties, including Joel Rogers. They are the normal people around here -- here, where I feel so comfortable, where I have lived for a quarter of a century, even though I in no way belong here. Have some pity on me, dear readers.