Young men who don't like mustard

Quiet around here today because I was supervising a gang of college-age young men – Buster and pals – who were doing landscaping to earn some extra money. These bruisers were laying down 6 yards or so of mulch, getting at the “hard to reach” weeds and otherwise helping to prettify the place up – for a fee, of course, and all the juice, water, soda, watermelon and grub I could provide.

At one point I handed out a “bucket o’ samitches” – all different sorts of sandwiches on different sorts of rolls. The bucket came back mostly empty (one half of a roast beef samitch couldn’t find a taker) but Buster said, as day’s work came to a close, “next time, no mustard. None of us really like mustard.”

I rather dislike it myself, but I was surprised to hear that the manly men were mustard-sensitive.

Tomorrow, I guess it’s burgers on the grill. And blogging will continue lightish, but here are a few good ‘uns you might enjoy.

McCain: one day I like him, another I don’t. Today I do, I like him. If he puts Gov. Sarah Palin on the ticket I will like him more…so much more…Classical Values notes McCain’s scary temper.

Jeanette has a guest poster who knows a few things about oil and America and dares to tell it to you straight.

An AlQaeda mastermind questions the use of terror as a means of movement. That’s kind of like “winning hearts and minds” isn’t it? Doesn’t fit the narrative, though. Did you know the founding fathers also faced Islamists? News to me. Oh, and a list of what’s going well in Iraq. People in the press really do have some ‘splainin’ to do.

For your Obama Files The Gaffe-a-Day round up. If Bush did this on the campaign trail they’d have called him a moron and put “snipers wanted” graphics over his pictures on late-night talk shows. Oh, wait…they did. Well, it shouldn’t happen again. It wasn’t very nice the first time. I for one am mighty glad that it’s no longer acceptable “free speech” to joke about, ponder, wish for, merchandise or script-out and film fantasy assassinations, as it has been for the last few years. It was very ugly, and there is no place for it in our electoral or political theater. Some documentary maker should look back on all that, maybe.

I do have one question, though. If Obama is so smart, and those people in the middle states, who are so bitter and clinging and stuff…how come they keep calling him on his history/geography gaffes?

Czech President Vaclav Klaus wants to debate Al Gore on Global Warming. Gore, of course, won’t. Klaus compares the global warmingists to communists in their ambitions and the scope of their reach:

Klaus, an economist, said he opposed the ‘climate alarmism’ perpetuated by environmentalism trying to impose their ideals, comparing it to the decades of communist rule he experienced growing up in Soviet-dominated Czechoslovakia.

‘Like their (communist) predecessors, they will be certain that they have the right to sacrifice man and his freedom to make their idea reality,’ he said.

‘In the past, it was in the name of the Marxists or of the proletariat – this time, in the name of the planet,’ he added.

Rachel Lucas on why sitting out the election or voting third party is dumb. Maybe she can convince you guys where I’ve failed!

Neoneocon on Obama, Chavez and “doublethink”.

Patrick O’ Hannigan on knowing the difference between a mensch and a putz.

Why does Michael Isikoff keep working for an outfit that likes to altogether spike his investigative stories or bury them, either way to protect a Democrat? I’m just asking.

Please, make it stop: Please make the puppets-at-Holy Mass stop!

Ann Althouse does not like her Amazon Kindle, and for the same reasons I am reluctant to go eBook. A book is meant to be touched, and cracked open, smelled and touched some more. I don’t think I’d enjoy reading an eBook anymore than I enjoy reading online, which I actually hate, and if I am doing a great deal of it, I’m printing things.

Oh, and my piece on Ted Kennedy over at Inside Catholic is apparently getting a lot of attention, and yer girl is getting her head shoved into the proverbial toilet by some commenters. Again. Apparently for some readers, I do not sufficiently appreciate how holy and sacred human life is. Imagine that, and here I’d thought I understood it pretty well. Whatever. I hold no grudge. If you head over there, do look around, some really good and thought-provoking articles being featured.