Which had this poem he wrote, inside:

And this picture, as well:

Um… <*sniff*>. (I love you too, boy.)

The picture below tells you why she’s the woman who can win:

On May 23 of this year, at about 4:58 in the afternoon, the BSA decided that it would also no longer prohibit love. Round about 4:59, the AHG issued a statement dissolving its relationship with the BSA. Here it is:

Memorandum of Mutual Support – Dissolution Statement

It was with great disappointment that American Heritage Girls, Inc. Board of Trustees received the news of the change to the Boy Scouts of America’s membership standards. It was our sincerest hope the voice of the majority of those associated with the BSA would be heard and that the BSA would continue the amazing 103-year legacy of its founder to prepare young people to make ethical and moral choices. Unfortunately, the organization chose to step away from that commitment.

As a result of leaving its time-honored traditions, the BSA has left American Heritage Girls with no choice but to dissolve our Memorandum of Mutual Support. We do so with a heavy heart. We have enjoyed a mutually beneficial relationship with BSA through the years. However, the American Heritage Girls Board of Trustees has decided that we cannot in good conscience continue in a formal relationship with the BSA.

As an independent, faith-based leadership and character development organization, we want everyone associated with the American Heritage Girls to know that our board members unanimously affirm the AHG Statement of Faith and its Scriptural foundation, and we are committed to continue providing a safe environment for every girl involved.

Nice dig at the end there, eh? “A safe environment.” From what? Obviously, they are worried about girls who love girls. Man, that love thing must be scary, because about 5:01 or so, a fellow named “John Stemberger” announced he would form his own American Heritage Boys (so far, an organization of 0.0 boys), or something similar, so mean-spirited parents can stop their sons from having any fun with the Boy Scouts. Mr. Stemberger is the founder of “On My Honor,” a group so lacking in significance that I can’t give you a link to a Wikipedia page about it, because there is no Wikipedia page about it. Mr. Stemberger and his followers (if there are any) are dedicated to making sure boys with mean parents have a place those meanies can send them. No doubt, those boys and the girls of AHG can have a social, if their parents haven’t already decided that would also be too much fun. (Do be careful, mean-spirited parents: boys and girls have been known to hold hands when left together, and, well… they might end up loving each other! Can’t let that happen.)

On My Honor does have its own Web site, which I guess means they are significant enough to someone to put it up. I’m guessing that someone is John Stemberger who, in my humble opinion, needs to get another hobby. Be warned: you need a strong stomach to read the whole thing, which appears dedicated to casting the BSA as a kind of leather-clad bikers’ orgy. Oh, there’s a link to accept donations, too (and doesn’t that remind you of someone else who beats this drum?)

Meanwhile, the rest of us (which, on the numbers above, appears closer than ever to being damned near all of us) are joining hands (hush your mouth, now!) and building the better world that some of us have waited for, for far too long. With a dwindling few still claiming jaw-dropped shock at a Cheerios cereal ad portraying an inter-racial couple, and J.C. Penney reacting to an impotent “boycott” over its gay’s-okay Mother’s Day ad with a gay’s-okay Father’s Day ad, it would seem that the process of growing up is nearing the end of its adolescence for America.

(Oh, check out some of the other work of Whitney Avalon, who plays the mom in the cereal ad. This woman’s a bit of a pistol.)

Yup, every candidate loves to hear, “I’ll vote for you.” But, until now, I never knew those words meant more, when you hear them said to the one you love.

But they should take a moment to remember exactly how they felt four years ago, at the Republican nomination for Attorney General of this man:

Strap in, boys and girls. This is gonna be a rough ride.

To a generation (actually, a couple of them), that’s a beloved image created by a master artist. His name was Ray Harryhausen, and what he did was magic.

Mostly working alone, Harryhausen used articulated mechanical figures (“moveable dolls,” if you prefer) to create animated sequences for live-action films. In his hands, a tiny skeleton or a dinosaur puppet acquired, if not a soul, then a kind of energy that seemed to give it life. Moving the arms and legs of his tiny figures a very, very little bit at a time, Ray Harryhausen painstakingly photographed, frame by patient frame, the equivalent of a full-sized skeleton or a towering creature, moving, charging, swinging its sword or thrashing its tail. From one frame to the next, his manipulations could take hours. An enduring story is that the skeletons above, from “Jason and the Argonauts,” sometimes took Harryhausen an entire day to step through less then one full second of motion-picture film.

In an era when many films are nearly all calculated by computers, the stop-motion techniques used by Harryhausen may seem quaint, maybe even obsolete. But they are not. Movies like “The Corpse Bride” and “Nightmare Before Christmas” prove that animation still looks best when it’s real (if that’s not an oxymoron). The makers of the former not only believed in that enough to craft an entire film in Harryhausen’s model, they added a slight homage, by putting his name on the piano that shows up in a particular scene. It’s a very sweet moment to be in the theater as those frames fleet by, and you see a few heads nodding, maybe catching one or two by eye, knowing you’re all thinking the same thing: Ray Harryhausen is why we’re here.

You may know I’m working (slower than Ray ever did, alas) on a computer-based stop-motion system of my own. He never had the tool that I’m creating, and no one will ever really work the way Ray Harryhausen did, but a few of us still love the kind of thing he was about, and that’s why, today, a few of us will feel, again, the world is now a lesser place.

Maestro, you were the first, you were the best, you were the only. You will always be missed.

Yup, almost immediately after President Obama took office, the number of monthly jobless claims declined, and has been declining ever since. As of today, it’s no higher than it was before the American economy collapsed under the prior president.

But those are just numbers. Educated people like numbers and educated people tend to think socialism has its merits, so that proves numbers are wrong. Heck, most educated people like the president, so how much more proof do you need? Oh, want some spin? Here ya go: the president’s critics like to say that all of the improvements in the job market, every single one of them, are due to fewer people seeking work. Well, what’s that mean? Does that mean the numbers under George Bush (that’s the part ramping up like the crest of Everest to the left of the red line on the graph) were a good thing? Everyone was looking for work, but no one could find a job. That’s a sign of a really healthy economy, apparently, while people losing their jobs in increasingly fewer numbers (which is what the above graph really tells you, rather than how many people are or are not dropping in or out of the job market) is a sign of a bad economy, which means Obama is a bad president.

If all this makes you wonder if there is any direction that line can go without his critics claiming that Obama is a bad president, stop wondering. The answer is “no.” See, to his critics, it is axiomatic that Obama is a bad president and, therefore, everything proves this. That’s puzzling logic, I grant you, but these are people who say that the polls are wrong when they claim that a majority of Americans want more background checks on gun sales, simply because those polls report that this is what 90% of Americans want. That can’t be true because, well, it is axiomatic that there must never be more regulation of gun sales, guns, people dying from guns, the shooting of guns, or, well, just guns. Guns prove that 90% of the people don’t want more regulation on guns, even though that’s what they want, and Obama proves that Obama is a bad president because, well… he’s Obama. Gee, you act like this is hard to understand.

Anyway, if there’s anyone left who is both undecided and interested in facts, the graph above might be useful to them. If, however, you are one of those who knows that Obama is a bad president no matter what the facts might be, you have yet another opportunity to sound stupid by explaining why the left side of that graph is what you wanted, and the right side isn’t. Or you can talk about guns. Either will do.