msbelle is very wise.

And how awesome is it that Buffistas have such connections? Go Sparky!

Crap.

So far the levees are holding, but they are overtopped by the storm surge. Not a levee failure yet. But the pumps are supposedly are all on backup power because main systems have already failed.

The Army Corp of Engineers always had stated that the levees could take a direct hit by a Cat 3. This is a glancing blow by a Cat 2. It shouldn't be this damn close!

Here's hoping all of the reports of cost cutting and single bidding for the levee and pump repair by the ACE was exaggerated....

Ooof. I feel sorry for Palin's daughter, because I wonder if there was really any other choice. I mean...sure. Maybe she wanted to have the baby and marry the father. At 17. But with your mom being governor and pro-life and now running for VP, if you wanted to have an abortion and never see the father again, was there really any chance that was going to happen?

Yeah. At five months, I hope that's an indication that she intended to keep it anyway (though for a young girl in an ardently pro-life family, I don't that you can assume), but I get a definite shot-gun wedding vibe off of this, which is unfortunate.

I heard the news about the Palin kid and the levees both. Still crossing my fingers for all of them.

On the lighter side of things, I've had to skip a lot lately. Have we talked about Spaghetti cat here?

eta: the explanation for the cat

I hope that's not the case regarding the daughter. I met the SO when I was sixteen and knew I wanted to marry him, which I did at eighteen, so it's not impossible that her intentions are genuinely felt. I know everyone thought we were having a shotgun wedding at the time, but no, we were just trying to elope.

I used to be amused thinking that everyone who thought we had a shotgun wedding must have been surprised when no baby showed up in the first year. But then I realized they probably just thought I aborted or miscarried. But again, no, we just have opted not to have children, and we're still going strong fourteen years in.

My in-laws are safely in Greenville, AL. Their cruise (which they booked a month ago, because my FiL's annual plant shut down/vacation happens every year at this time) is delayed but still on. They're in a hotel room and will wait and see if the storm surge goes down and they reopen the port in Mobile.

I hope the Gulf Coast weathers this ok, considering the improved preparation and the weakening of Gustav before it made landfall.

Isn't Palin's oldest son on active duty with the military?

People later told me they thought I might have been pregnant when we got married, because there wasn't a super-long engagement. I think we got started talking about getting married in November, and got married in May, but I don't think people outside of us knew about it until maybe February or so. We actually got married in May because I was going to Greece for a year in the fall. I was sort of boggled that people would assume that since we didn't plan a wedding for 18 months and get married in a cathedral that I must be pregnant. Really, we are just low-key people!

Obama speaks:

Mr. Obama said the pregnancy “has no relevance to Governor Palin’s performance as a governor or her potential performance as a vice president.” He added that, “my mother had me when she was 18. How family deals with issues and teen-age children – that shouldn’t be the topic of our politics.”

“So,” he added, “I would strongly urge people to back off these kinds of stories.”

sumi, Track Palin is in the Army National Guard and is scheduled to go to Iraq on September 11.