Churchhoney

Because horny 19-year-old boys who've lived in crowded households and haven't dated anybody often don't have the knowledge and/or forbearance and skill to understand how a woman's orgasms work and to hang in there and cooperate effectively while their equally inexperienced young woman orgasms...and because a young woman from Jessa's background probably has not had enough, ahem, experimentation time to really understand how her body works so she can get a good bang for her buck? Not that there aren't other sexual pleasures that I'm sure Jessa is enjoying outside of orgasm. But I can't help but think that, after awhile, if you're not getting a good climax on a regular basis, your interest in the procedure may become a little lower than that of the guy whose rocket is achieving liftoff after every countdown. And I can't help but remember Michelle's sex advice to Jessa -- Don't worry; it doesn't take long. ... And for a sexually inexperienced 22-year-old woman, I think it often takes quite a while. Maybe Jessa's a natural, but I think chances are good that, at this point in her sexual career, she still has some things to work out when it comes to getting the most out of the event. And for some people, that can make it a bit of a chore, rather than just the unadulterated pleasure that I expect Ben is getting.

Don't feel bad. I'd say that "Josh," "Gothard Command Center" and family claims that Duggarlings are brilliant practitioners of skills like graphic design are definitely "Things About the Duggars that Get on [a Lot of People's] Nerves."

That's an excellent question. I also would love to know how they felt. I can't imagine being anything but horrified and mortified if people I didn't know were sending me presents. Heck, that's my feeling when people I do know give me presents -- hate thinking that anyone feels obligated to give stuff to me. So I feel as if they must have to justify it to themselves in some way. But maybe not. They're God's chosen, and I'm not, maybe. First things first, you know.

How true. But I do think that they truly convinced themselves, long ago under the influence of Goddard and their own insecure natures, that they're God's innocent lambs chosen to save the world, and that they're besieged by the devil, who lurks constantly behind the eyes and in the intentions of all us Presbyterians, Buddhists, agnostics, Catholics, Jews, Mormons, atheists, Episcopalians, Muslims, etc., etc. And Boob's their umbrella against this torrent of satanic intention. He's missing more than a few ribs, if you ask me. And the whole belief system is nuts and, I would argue, the very opposite of spiritual or divinely inspired. But they've drilled it into themselves and into those kids, and imbued everybody with their high-level anxieties, I expect. Otherwise, how to account for the fact that they all remain securely locked into the system run by idiotic, ignorant, terminally selfish Jim Bob. ... Well, the belief and the access to cash, I suppose .... Maybe with the show over, somebody on the compound will step out from under umBoobrella and realize that it isn't raining pitchforks all the time. Michelle's whole being depends on this big vision of herself and her stupid hubby, of course, so she won't be the one. But maybe somebody. I'm hopin'. Of course, he's shaped them into people for whom even a small rain could be devastating. But maybe it'll happen.

Given that I am massively anal retentive, I actually kind of love it. ; )

Well, that's good news.

I forgot to add that many of the older ones, at least, have already proven their skills at haranguing people and trying to get money for nothing. : )

I think you've found their answer. Jim Bob can start a telemarketing center in one of the outbuildings. They've got some big ugly empty spaces to house the thing, the furniture and supplies needed are cheap -- maybe they can even haul some excess chairs or something out from the TTH, they've got enough desperate unemployables to have a full staff up and running in no time (including Amy and maybe even King Dill Pickle), they're all sufficiently robotic and dead-eyed not to deviate from a memorized script (and they're good at memorizing because: Book of Proverbs), and they'll make a perfect little robot army that Josh, the oldest "born to be the family leader" son, can whip into shape on a daily basis -- to make sure his ego remains as strong as possible. Heck, they're even raising up a whole new unemployable generation to replace those who retire or otherwise drop by the wayside. And it'll be okay for the girls to work there because: family. Maybe they can install a few extra toilets for the inevitable overlapping times when two or three girls are in labor.

Noticed this headline the other day: http://www.uppermichiganssource.com/news/story.aspx?id=1233452 "16 Candidates and Counting" Look, JIm Bob, you're still relevant!

Hey, stalking the Internet sites where people are highly critical of the Duggars could be a new full-time job for Josh. Now if he could just find a way to get somebody other that JB to pay him for that.

Maybe we could compare whose picture or voice is more likely to induce projectile vomiting. That way we can just register our responses and not have to discuss them, because they're visceral and instinctual and the heart has reasons that reason will never know. For me, it's Jim Bob. By a projectile mile. I really dislike disliking someone to the point that I can't see anything connected with them in a positive or even a neutral light. But Jim Bob falls into that category. I'm generally big on giving people the benefit of the doubt. But while I actually try to do this with JB, I'm apparently physically incapable of it. I do hope he's better than I perceive him to be. (And that young -- and hopefully still capable-of-growth -- Ben never moves any further in the Jim Bob direction)

I'm kind of bummed that I've missed all the cheap jewelry. I'm still getting ads for software to manage the health of large populations. Of course, that could be Duggar-related, too.

I saw a talking head at some point this spring (just before things broke) in which Josiah and some howler were saying that, yeah, daddy is in real estate, so he can probably give each of his kids a house. They were sort of kidding, maybe. But not really. ..... They've all developed strange expectations and they've developed them quickly, I would bet. ... It's kind of like a flash movie on what happens to people when they turn into the 1 percent and what the young heirs of the 1 percent are like, I'm thinking. You lose a grip on reality awfully quickly, especially when you're a kid, and isolated and uneducated, with no backlog of real-world information to test your new world against.

Fair enough. Don't look at how the sausage is made. Will be interesting to see how this all plays out. I still think Crass is kind of a tone-deaf idiot. (of course, he's a buddy of Huckabee and Jim Bob, so ...) Well, IANAL, but I've read the statute in question and had some experience with the federal FOIA law over the years. And, yeah, some of it is pretty ambiguous. And in both the crafting and the execution of these laws generally, it's always been notoriously difficult to figure out how exactly you should balance the interests of public disclosure and the personal interest of people whose personal information appears in documents. These particular documents also fall into kind of a weird, unusual category, too, seeming like one thing but being another, which makes it more confusing. Not sure you could write a law that adequately lays it all out. There will always be a devil in the details.

In his communications (at least what we've seen), Crass says nothing that suggests the law is unfair. Instead, he directly accuses the chief and city of indefensible and personally-to-them embarrassing actions. I don't understand that language because it points to the chief as a wrongdoer, not to the city's (state's) regime of law as being harmful and unfair, to me, anyway. But if it's the system of laws, and this particular law, that you're ultimately concerned with, then why would you use such language aimed at one person, why wouldn't you be railing against the system, against "the man," and so on? Why a purely personal statement about the chief? The only reason I can see is if they know something about the chief that they figure she won't want revealed, and so that will drive a monetary settlement. That, however, will take the whole suit out of the judicial system. If they scare them into settling, the suit won't go on through appeals courts to the point that it would finally require or motivate the state legislature to revisit and change the law. So if what they want is to change the law, this doesn't seem like the right way to go about it, because I can't see any reason for their particular language except to force a settlement, and foster fear in other local Arkansas officials who might be called upon to release other Duggar documents. And if that happens, then the actual legal process of challenging, revisiting, and potentially forcing change in a flawed law will never happen. That's what I need to have explained. How do you go from saying an individual's actions are indefensible and embarrassing to a legal process that effectively challenges the law that that individual seems to have been obeying. (It may well be a standard legal tactic to focus your initial attack on one person and then have that lead to something bigger. I don't know! IANAL. But I'd love to know how that works, because it just seems very odd to me. Here's my question: If your target is a bad law, why do you accuse a person who executed the law of indefensible and embarrassing behavior? What's the line of argument that goes on from there? Because it kind of seems like a dead end to me, in terms of forcing actual change in the legal system, but I don't know the ins and outs of litigation, so I'm probably missing something major.)

No question that that's the way the legal system moves forward. But the annoyance (and confusion) for me about what the Dugs are trying comes from what the lawyer says about it. When he says "I don't see a defense of the chief's actions" and says that the lawsuit will be "embarrassing," it doesn't suggest to me that they see the lawsuit as a challenge to what they consider a faulty statute. That language, to me, suggests that they're arguing that the police chief was not acting in accord with the law and, further, that they know something about the chief's behavior or the city's behavior that show them to have flouted law, acted from criminal motivations, or whatever. If they're really challenging the law as it stands, then why would they say that the chief, personally, has no defense for what she did? If she was obeying a flawed law, then that law is her defense. (And didn't city officials say early on that they were kind of horrified that the law required them to release those documents, and that their lawyers went over it and over it trying to figure out if that could really be the case, then finally concluded that it was, somewhat to their regret? ... maybe I'm hallucinating this?) It's not her fault that a statute is flawed. She has to obey it. So her obeying it would not embarrass her or the city. The way I read the lawyer's notes is that, instead, they plan to argue that the chief and the city went against the statute for some nefarious or stupid reason. I don't see how their language suggests that they're actually challenging the law, even though that's what you'd think someone would do here.. The lawyer's language surprises me, and I don't understand it. But it ends up sounding just like Jim Bob pettiness and an attempt to accuse a specific person of being out to get him and his family, not like the right way to go about changing things if you think the statute makes it too easy to reveal damaging personal information in general and you hope to change that. So I'm guessing the actual suit would have to take a quite different tack than Crass is taking in these communications. But that, again, confuses me. Why make these statements if you aren't personally going after the chief rather than after the law? (There may well be some lawyer reason for doing this, but somebody needs to explain it to me because I really really don't get it.)

My goodness. He looks kind of spooky lurking there behind Derick's shoulder. Even a little devilish. heh

Passed by those air show photos again, on the way to Fake Country Singer's virtual wedding. The oblivious blissful looks on the young boys' faces (each of whom looks at least three years younger than he is, in my opinion) as they enjoy sitting in experimental aircraft and watching hotshot pilots while wearing their aviator sunglasses. And they don't have a clue that this world is actually a million miles out of their reach, largely thanks to Fathead Daddy. Well, enjoy the pleasant memories, kids, when you're supporting your as-many-as-god-gives-me kidlets by working in a carwash.

Wow. Full of herself much? No wonder she's calling herself Duggar. She and Jim Bob are two peas in a pod. Imagine the overwhelming joy of someone who gets to own a "handwritten letter" from this idiot. And all for the low low price of sending her a card or "and etc." Her "followers"? I suppose this is the way the Ds talk about the leghumpers. They truly do think they've got their own little (or big...) cults going on.

And then look at the photo of the missionary "temps." They're probably single, but other than that I find their role here even more puzzling than J and D's role. They may not have any children they should be at home raising, but they look like they're attending a sorority picnic, not carrying out any kind of "mission" at all. I'd really like to see a clear statement of what the group's intention is in bringing in these short-timer groups. What, if anything, are the missiontemps intended to accomplish for the locals, and what, if anything, are they supposed to take back to the states from the experience? I understand it when it's a working mission, but when it's a "teaching"??? mission like this, I just don't get it.

Ah, Strawberry Pretzel Dessert. A nursing-home staple!

Yeah, if this really was what they felt, I do see exactly what you're saying. I just can't give them this much credit, though. Given the short shrift that they seemed to give their daughters' problems, both at the time and in their recent statements, I've just read them as caring only about the release of information damaging to them, their wallets, and number-one son. Given that, I see their motivations a lot differently. And, of course, none of us actually know their motivations.

Can you say "Swarovski crystals"? Hard to see JB springing for those either, actually.

I agree that this would be a good outcome.... But why do I think that, if no monetary damages were awarded, no intimidation factor against future release of any Jim Bob-related information resulted, and much-improved privacy protection for minors were the only outcome, Jim Bob (otherwise known as Mr. Public Spirited) would not consider this a victory? ; )

I'm surprised she didn't ask for several of those in her bridal registry.