I would be reluctant to call China "visionary" when it has demonstrated a considerable degree of backwardness and misguided central planning in the modern age.  The one-child policy, anyone?  Backyard steel furnaces?

Ironically, Fan Shen's memoir Gang of One details his experiences during the Cultural Revolution as a city-dweller forcibly relocated to the countryside.  He was assigned to a comically futile, "visionary" mountain terracing project.

Here's an idea:  Disqualify all immigrants who entered the country illegally.

I agree that the "state of the world" excuse is a cop-out.  One cannot foresee the future.  One might have used that excuse in the 1970s, when panic about overpopulation and mass starvation was all the rage - fears that turned out to be unfounded.  The excuse is frequently used by folks who don't want children for reasons that they don't want to acknowledge, to others or to themselves.

Sadly, there are too many people who have no qualms about "pooping" out kids (to bowdlerize Adam Carolla's favorite phrase) without regard to their ability to support them.  I doubt these folks give a second thought to the state of the world.

For good, well-adjusted, nurturing, un-self-centered people who like children and are capable of supporting them, there is no greater tragedy than for them to refrain from having them, through natural or adoptive means.  However, a truly grudging and reluctant parent is going to be miserable, and make his children's lives miserable.

I tend to focus on geological and meteorological factors.  I would never live in an earthquake-, fire-, tornado-, hurricane-, mud-slide-, or flood-prone area.  I do own a waterfront vacation home in CT, but it sits on bedrock and is situated in such a way that it has weathered successfully every northeast hurricane since 1920.  Sandy's surge merely lapped at my front steps while structures a couple of hundred yards away were destroyed.

I've spent almost my entire life in the tri-state area of CT (born and bred), NY (college and post-college), and NJ (the past 8 years).  I loved living in NYC (20 years), but I couldn't see myself retiring there.  I always found depressing the sight of lonely, elderly folks navigating the city with difficulty.  Mrs. Dubya, though, would like to have a pied-a-terre in Manhattan once we're empty-nesters.

I've visited most of the states and cities and have lived in one of the most remote areas of the U.S.  Just about every place has something to recommend it.  Although NJ is a punchline, I find it an absolutely lovely place to live and raise children.

So, domestic production has increased over the past 12 months from 41.1% of our crude oil supply to 50.1%.  That is, indeed, a remarkable change.  I also look forward to our demand for crude oil being reduced by the advent of an infrastructure enabling widespread use of natural gas as a motor fuel.  It won't hurt the OPEC countries too much, though, because they excel in so many other areas besides oil exporting.  Saudi passenger jets, Venezuelan medical devices, Iranian automobiles--those kinds of things.

The Stones admire the blues greats who continued playing into old age, and they don't see why they shouldn't, too, and neither do I.  Did anyone ever say that black rock & roll/R&B/blues stars like Chuck Berry and James Brown and B.B. King were too old to perform?  I think there's a bias against the Stones because they are white (and British).

My 2 cents:  I like the Stones and Taylor Swift and Carrie Underwood.

I have known quite a few wealthy people, and with only a couple of exceptions, they have been people who worked their asses off, orders of magnitude harder than Fran Lebowitz has.

Karen, I think this podcast was the second time, too, that Peter quoted Lebowitz saying that she writes so slowly she could use her own blood without harming herself. That is funny stuff.

I do think she's a clever writer like Sedaris, and I'm sure I would enjoy her books, but her comments make me unwilling to support her lifestyle of sloth 'n' slander.

I do virtually all my reading on iPhone or iPad these days.  National Review, sometimes the Weekly Standard, and, on a daily basis (I know, it's not a magazine), The Wall Street Journal.  The Journal's iPad app is especially good.  For pornography, I turn to Coastal Home magazine.

"He was not an awful candidate; he won" is not an amoral statement. It is a statement of fact. We define bad candidates as those who do poorly in elections. You can certainly say that Sanford is a bad human being, but he was not a bad candidate. Again, I am not defending Sanford, and I don't think we should hold him up as a model Republican. But I do agree with Denise that Sanford's sin was commonplace, while Weiner's was deviant and creepy.

No, I am not defending Mark Sanford. I do think, however, that we can make value judgments about misbehavior and disqualifications for office. For example, I might rate Sanford's affair a "4", and his lying to the press a "5".  I might rate Weiner's sexting an "8", and his lying to the press and slandering Andrew Breitbart a "9".

This morning, NPR pithily summed up her career with the observation that she was "an opponent of abortion rights."

Why did they add the word "rights"?  Well, they can't help but point out that any abortion opponent is actually denying a Constitutional right that was spelled out by the Framers in black and white. Such Neanderthals must be shown to be exactly what they are: Tramplers of sacred rights.

<sarcasm/off> 

Sanford wasn't an awful candidate; he won.

The reason we're discussing which scandal was worse is that distinctions are important. Accepting the moral equivalence of Sanford's and Weiner's actions is playing "right into the Left's game plan."

I think y'all are missing the most important distinction between the two scandals. Weiner's denials were vehement, and amounted to slander against those who exposed him (pun not intended).  He put on quite an indignant performance and showed himself to be an extraordinarily gifted liar.  Therefore, the scandal revealed not one, but two serious character flaws, either of which would have been sufficient to end a political career in an earlier, simpler time.

Weiner's denials earned him favorable coverage in the left-wing media, and his attacks on Andrew Breitbart found sympathetic ears in the liberal echo chamber.  For a good laugh, check out this Eric Boehlert post from MediaMatters.org that predated Weiner's ultimate admission.  The money quote: 

Dismayed by Breitbart's "outrageous" insinuations about Weiner and "young girls," [CNN legal analyst Jeffrey] Toobin said it was "too bad that he got to say that stuff on CNN."

Agreed.

I'd love to ask Boehlert and Toobin today if they still thought it was "too bad" that someone exercised on CNN his right to free speech in order to make an assertion that was later proven to be true.

Duplicate post removed.

The Raspberries.