I've Done Worse and I'm not Resigning.

Home on the Range. Life is good along the banks of the Ventura River. The weather has been cool. We are still picking sweet peas although this might be the last week. I grew some beets and onions, and then put them together for a righteous beet salad. And the cucumbers are good too -- I ate them with some smoked salmon and heirloom tomatoes.

I got the salmon and tomatoes at the farmers market in Camarillo this morning. The booth next to me sells hydroponically grown heirloom tomatoes -- Norman Bauer in Oxnard is the grower. Most of the tomatoes go wholesale to the Los Angeles area ---- and then out to all the best restaurants that are willing to pay $2.50 a pound for a tomato that tastes good. But Norman warned me about unscrupulous growers who are foisting "heirlooms" on the public. He says they are not vine-ripened and they are gassed with ethylene and they have no flavor at all -- but they piggyback on the heirloom reputation for good flavor.

What a corrupt world! Well you just need to know your local farmer. I would trust Norman Bauer. I eat his tomatoes all the time, and they taste wonderful.

I've Done Worse and I'm not Resigning. I didn't look at the photos, did you? Because if you did, that makes you part of the problem -- manifesting some kind of prurient curiosity, a wish to be titillated or horrified. A description of what the photos entailed was enough for me to make a judgment. And I can sum it up this way -- "I've done worse myself and I'm not resigning."

But I'm referring to Congressman Weiner, of course

We're all vulnerable, you and me both. Let's put five determined investigators on your tail. Let's examine your every word and your every action over the last five years. Might we find something?

Well, I can tell you that there are things I have done and said that I don't want the whole world to know about. I believe poverty and obscurity protect me from the harshest kind of public scrutiny -- no one really wants to know.

A society cannot function without a certain amount of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

Take LaConner, where I lived for many years, a small town of 800. Do you want to know who is sleeping with who in that little burg? Well, you can find out without much effort, but it doesn't go in the newspaper. People have a right to screw up their own lives without the rest of the world watching.

On the other hand, there is this really weird new tendency for people to drop their pants in public -- Congressman Weiner is part of that trend. Ugh!

But I urge Weiner to tough it out, by next month no one will care, and I really doubt he will indulge in this kind of behavior again. His public humiliation has been a sufficient correction.....Otherwise I know nothing about him or his politics, and it's up to the people of his district to decide his future..

I'm still a Democrat. We're the natural party of sinners like Congressman Weiner -- we are adulterers and give in too easily to lascivious urges.. We are lazy and unkempt.. We accept government handouts. We sleep late and drink too much. We want other people to pay taxes, not ourselves... We're just not as good and as respectable as the Republicans. We take a casual interest in religion, if any......We are quarrelsome and disorganized and about the only reason we win elections is that there are so damn many of us.

But I like Conservatives. My very favorite conservative writer is Laura Wood who writes the Thinking Housewife blog. She calls herself a "traditionalist." Half the women in North America are self-publishing their memoirs this year, and most of it is drivel. Laura Wood, however, is worth reading. She hosts an intelligent discussion. I have often posted on her website -- now agreeing, now dis-agreeing.

I think it is true that conservatives can handle disagreement in a better way. Consider the feminist saying that the "personal is political" -- what that means is that "I don't agree with you and so I don't like you anymore" -- because it's all so personal and subjective and we know that objectivity is a sexist scam.

Not me, I think a degree of objectivity is obtainable, and a good argument is a stirring thing. So, I prefer Ms. Wood. She thinks and writes clearly. I don't agree with her, so what?

It's her premise that really appeals to me -- that women are different than men -- that's the simplest way to state it, but it's a startling idea and it opens up a whole world of intelligent discussion. Here's one, Why We Must Discriminate

Let me make this distinction -- I like her premise, but I do not particularly care for her conclusions. And it's not personal.

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