Three stories I heard on NPR on the way to Daycare which made me want to drop myself off there and play for the day while sending my baby daughter off to the office instead:

  • This kid whose doctor and parents are reluctant to take her off the Zoloft they suggested she start taking, even though she’s been asking to stop for a year. Some of the doctors quoted in the report are a bit frightening. “Oh, we don’t know when to take them off the stuff—some of my patients have been on them since they were seven and now they’re in their 20s,” or words to that effect. Mom and Dad insist they are just waiting for a “less stressful time” in their daughter’s life to stop her course of anti-depressants. But guess what? She’s a junior in high school, is looking at colleges, next year’s senior year and then it’s the transition to University and … you see how it goes. That’s the kind of parent I want to be! “Honey, the problem isn’t your shitty high school, it’s serotonin re-uptake malfunctions in your brain.”

  • John Kerry is starting to refer to himself in the third person, like Bob Dole did in ‘96. A sure sign of fatigue. Bush’s glib one-liners about Kerry are better than Kerry’s rebuttals. I’ve come to agree with Matt that the debates are going to be a rough ride for Kerry.

  • Perhaps saddest of all was hearing the father of Sgt Ben Isenberg of Oregon talk about his son’s death in Iraq. Sgt Isenberg was killed when his Humvee ran over a home-made mine. His father quietly explains how the war in Iraq is a “spiritual war” and that people “need to just dig into their Bible and read about it—it’s predicted, it’s predestined.” He says his son understood he had to go to Iraq because “our current President is a very devout Christian … [who] had the knowledge, and understood what was going on, and it’s far deeper than we as a people will every really know, because we don’t get the information that the President gets.” What can one say in the face of such belief? The President is simply unworthy of the trust these people have placed in him.