Happy news!

Number 18 is in da coochizzy!

Jim Bob & Michelle Duggar announce #18 is on the way!!!

We are so grateful to God to announce that Michelle is expecting our 18th child, due in January of 2009!

Psalm 127 says, “Lo children are a heritage of the Lord, the fruit of the womb is His reward.” We believe that each child is a special gift from God and we are thankful to Him for each one.

Oh, terrific. According to the website, the oldest son has gotten married. Which means. . . .

Comments

[LizDexic]

To quote Groucho: "I like cigars too, but I take 'em out once in a while."

[M.K.]

I wish I had not read this before lunch.

[four legs good]

Oh, gah.

There oughta be a law. Who pays to educate all of those kids?

[queek]

"What was your name again?"

[Frogspond]

four legs good - they are all homeschooled.

[JDM]

Goddam fucking retards.

[heydave]

That corner of the gene pool was already mutated, not it's spreading?

[queek]

I think it would be fitting that all the kids shared the same reproductive defect rendering them sterile!

[missy]

Do they make pessaries in XXXL?

[Frogspond]

Judging by the absolute affection that the oldest is holding his wife with in the picture on their website I am betting he is the gay one.

It's all part of a woman's right to choose

[noblejoanie]

Menopause can't come too soon to this woman.

[Gindy]

They may be home schooled but you can bet your tax dollars the parents claim each and every spawnette on their income taxes and get a HUGE deduction for them. Of course the deduction never measures up to the cost of housing, feeding, clothing (if you can call the togs the spawn are wearing clothes) and educating them. They still have to pass tests to prove they have been schooled and not just on bible verses.

[mike in pr]

Dare I say that some of you sound as intolerant and authoritarian as the pro-life crowd.

[whoissecretdubai]

Hello,

A humble request...

Do you, by any chance, happen to know who Secret Dubai (the blogger: secretdubai.blogspot.com) is?

http://whoissecretdubai.blogspot.com/

[amused]

Hey, if they're a happy family and can afford to raise such a huge clan (and they want to... yeesh!), go for it. I don't care.

But I must say that the poster caption is quite hillllllarious.

[virgotex]

didn't they just have one last year?

[zoe]

Oh my.
The Joad family times 6?

[shpx.ohfu]

They get lots of wingnut welfare from their wackt Quiverfull brethren down in rope belt country.

I'm sure Discovery/Sci chan or whomever gave them a TV show to parade their freakish reproductive beliefs before the entire world is paying for that "privilege" as well. Too bad an otherwise reputable channel gives them a stipend for nothing more than irresponsible fucking.

[Molly Ivors]

didn't they just have one last year?

Well, that's pretty much always the case.

It takes a helluva toll on your body, being always pregnant. I'm sure Michelle is anemic and her hormones are way out of whack. I'm also sure she doesn't nurse.

[Jim Bailey]

Being the oldest of eight I can tell ya that if they're happy they are VERY happy...being from a LARGE family makes it easier to handle communal living when you get older...in fact a quiet house
can drive you nuts in the middle of the night.
Let's cut 'em a little slack eh?
But the caption is fucking hilarious!

[sightunseen]

I do wonder to what extent that the massive publicity
this family has engendered has altered their lives in any appreciable way? Would they have continued to birth all these children if there had been no public showing of their offspring? And do they, as individuals, feel somewhat driven to further their
procreating?

[danno]

Given the fact that most of the planet's problems are a direct result of overpopulation, HELL NO I won't give them one tiny bit of slack. People with large families ought to be penalized so they bear the true cost of their sick obsession with breeding.

And yeah, I'm very intolerant of people whose selfishness and stupidity is so goddamn destructive. Being tolerant does not require a person to accept every damn fool thing someone does.

[Elspeth R]

That family disgusts me and to the concern trolls - NO I do not owe them a damned bit of consideration so get bent!!! They are tantamount to animal hoarders..."hey let's get (make) another one!?" Let alone the child-making equivalent of a Crazy Cat Lady (who happens to get laid once a year whether she wants to or not).

The most important word that Madame Ovary could have learned (and obvy didn't): "NO!"

Are they sure it's really the 18th foetus and not her uterus just pulling the plug and making to move out for some peace & quiet in an undisclosed location?

Elspeth

[Caveat]

Thank you, danno, saved me the trouble.

[pansypoo]

DID YOU KNOW THEY ARE ON TLC TEEVEE?!? my MOM watches that tripe.

[pissed off patricia]

Well Mother Earth, you'll get no relief from this family.

[donna]

I can't wait for the eldest daughter to leave the family and demand sterilization... you know she does all the work, mom is always pregnant...

I knew a woman who raised her six siblings -- she wanted nothing to do with kids. Ever.

[wa ching]

Oh no!...
Not more Mormons!

[sparrow]

With his wife standing in the back of the photo, the viewer can't tell if Papa Duggar also keeps her barefoot.

[Carol]

I think obsessive breeding is a very good discription. Either that or it's a puppy mill for humans.

[alaskarealestate@msn.com]

They are having many children because they aborted their first one and feel terrible and being Christian they now are being extremely literal about "be fruitful and multiply". But in the end even having 2 kids per couple will doom this world because we don't die until 3 or 4 grandkids are also grown up and possibly having 3 or 4 great grandkids. By the time you die easily half a dozen or more people will be standing where originally only you and your spouse stood. That is exponential growth even with just 2 kids.

[dermot]

This is a good example of why attempts by environmentalists
to "save the planet" through voluntary conservation are doomed.

All the resources that you conserve through a simple lifestyle
are simply used up by someone else - Mommy and Poppy and
Sprogs 1-18 in this case. There are several well known economic
theories/ideas to explain this:

"Jevon's Paradox" - first realised after Watts improved
the efficiency of the steam engine in the early 19th century.
The result was an INCREASE in coal use, not a decrease.

"The Rebound Effect" - a 20th century reframing of the
same idea - namely, if a business reduces energy use by 50%,
that saved energy (or some proportion of it) will simply be
used by another.

"The Khazzoom-Brookes postulate" - very similar to the
Rebound Effect, above.

So, what's the point of conserving, if the economic system not
just encourages but demands constant growth - growth of resource
use, of population, of EVERYTHING!

The main reason to do so is to prepare oneself for the point in
time when we will begin to feel limits - limits in the amount
of oil, land, food, clean water, etc.

So, what will limit our growth? At some point we'll hit a wall,
as the Earth is finite, and the rapture is not going to happen.
The 19th century German biologist Justus Von Liebig formulated
"Liebig's Law", which showed that the growth of a plant is limited
by the essential ingredient in least supply. A plant doesn't just
need nitrogen, water and sunlight - it also needs phosphorous,
potasssium, magnesium and many micronutrients. The absence of ANY
of these essentials limits the maximum size of the plant.

Humans are like a plant - though our demands are even wider. We
need soil, freshwater, energy, clean air, petroleum, minerals in
our food supply (just like plants), land, etc. Once we hit the
limits of ONE of these items, the global population will have
reached its peak - at which point it's cross-your-knees Mamma
Breeder - it's no more babies for thee. Verily.

Economists bleat about "substitution" - the ability to take one
depleting resource and replace it with another. It's hard to imagine
a substitution for freshwater - a substance that we're going to need
in vast quantities - quantities that just don't exist.

Between now and 2050, we'll need to grow more food than in the
entire history of human civilisation combined. This would seem
unlikely.

So, in the meantime, the breeders will continue to breed, pushing
us closer to that cliff, chanting "Palin 2012" all the way.

It is difficult to be optimistic about our chances.

NOTE: Anyone interested in a full explanation of the nonsensical faith
in "Growth" should watch this lecture by Albert Bartlett:

Arithmetic, Population and Energy"

Don't be put off by the wonkish title - it's actually quite entertaining.

[Ming]

Apparently that one is a clown car.

[willis]

Must have an entire sweat shop somewhere in the 3rd world just to keep `em dressed.

[moistenedbink]

Ehhh...I just went and read the story of the oldest boy Josh and new wife Anna and how they met...Hmmm...married since 9/26 and their site is all about helping others have a good marriage? Err...what would they know about it exactly? Especially since neither one had any earlier relationships.

The bottom of the webpage says it is designed by Premiere Productions - kind of says it all huh? Look at Jim Bob and babymaker's page, a lot of it is all about their media appearances. I think their whole life is one big production.

[tellybelly]

Gott hep me, that bottom row looks like they would be quite comfortable sitting on Edgar Bergen's lap in front of a big microphone...

[The Crapture]

hot-dog...

hallway...

i'm just sayin'

[JimmyDean'sFuckedUpCousinClyde]

Walter Sobchak: Were you listening to The Dude's story, Donny?
The Dude: Walter...
Donny: What?
Walter Sobchak: Were you listening to The Dude's story?
Donny: I was bowling.
Walter Sobchak: So you have no frame of reference here, Donny. You're like a child who wanders into the middle of a movie and wants to know...
The Dude: (interrupting) Walter, Walter, what's the point, man?
Walter Sobchak: There's no reason - here's my point, dude, there's no fucking reason why these two...
Donny: Yeah, Walter, what's your point?

[pansypoo]

we need more plagues.

[Elspeth Ravenwind]

Pansypoo, the Duggars ARE a plague...

Elspeth

[wa ching]

Where's Michael Vick when we need him?

[UhhhDude]

My wife and I have six kids. We're not doing this for show, or because we have an unhealthy need to have babies: We want to offset all the mentally unstable kids like the Duggars with six intelligent, well-balanced, moral, and liberal children. Children we are encouraging to become leaders, not lemmings.

Besides, we believe the Rope Belt/Quiverfull crowd just doesn't get as excited at large families like mine, seeing as how they are all a little darker skinned than the Duggars' clan. (And yes, I believe that the Duggars and their ilk are practicing their own version of eugenics.)

[hauksdottir]

Marketing whizzes. They market their family the same aggressive way they dress and market a house: buy this dream.

Well, some of us aren't buying. :pffffft:

[FeralLiberal]

Their genetic material is definitely from the kiddie pool.

Mrs. Duggar must use BGH to keep the youngest fed.

[Auntie Meme]

My winger relatives LOVE these people. So well-behaved, doncha know. And self-suffcient (ha!). Not to mention Bible-believing.

Retort I should have used at Thanksgiving dinner: I wasn't aware that the Bible was an animal husbandry manual. My bad.

[S-Six]

Brood sow.

[Molly]

My vagina hurts just thinking about it. Living proof that the rhythm method DOESN'T WORK!

[Lesley]

Her womb must look like the inside of a Turkish prison.