"Updated version of the old Yakov Smirnoff joke: in China, they execute criminals, in soviet America, we pay them billions and elect them to high office."

Reasonable people can argue over the truth of that statement, but it doesn't work as a joke. Two alternatives:

In China, they execute criminals; in America, criminals execute you!

In China, officials pay criminals money; in America, criminal's money pays officials!

Next time, Democrats, in the name of bipartisanship, should give the Republicans what they want: next gen weapon systems, illegal wars and monuments to Ronald Reagan.

Unless the economy picks up and your husband can get a new job, you will not be able to buy a house in Southern California. Look, I'm in the same boat. Live in LA, fiance lost her job when her firm dissolved. Our income is half of what it was in December. So, yeah, if housing prices utterly collapsed in LA, we could afford a house. But if housing prices collapsed, I'm guessing that would either be the cause or the result of an economic cataclysm. Even I still had a job, why would I want to live in LA then? If we have to help out some jagoffs so LA doesn't turn into Rio de Janeiro or Mumbai, I'm for it.

Spouses, perhaps?

Conservatism's slide into irrelevance continues.

Is AIG an admitted carrier in the states in which it operates? If so, then wouldn't AIG's failure put pressure on the various states' insurance guaranty associations? What a mess.

Car-lovers will say that's because roads don't need operating expenses, but I would argue that because a new highway creates more traffic around its ramps, upgrades to local roads should be considered maintenance foe the highway.

-- dartvader

A friend of mine who works in the Idaho governor's office told me that highway maintenance in Idaho generally costs 10% of the total construction cost for that highway. Presumably, that figure would apply to other states and, also, that surface street maintenance costs would be similar.

One study of people living near large hog farms in North Carolina, for instance, concluded "persons exposed to odors from intensive hog operations experienced 'more tension, more depression, more anger, more fatigue and more confusion' than a group of unexposed persons."

Have we just explained rural conservative voting patterns?

Is leaving your child in a car criminal negligence? Under most jurisdictions, criminal negligence requires more than ordinary carelessness, inattention, or mistake in judgment. A person acts with criminal negligence when: (1) the person acts in a reckless way and creates a high risk of death or great bodily injury; and (2) (the mythical) reasonable person would have known that acting in that way would create such a risk. I'm not sure that I'd say forgetting the child is an act of recklessness. I don't do criminal law though, so I would defer to someone who does.

Regardless, it would not be an act of "murder". It would be involuntary manslaughter. The whole point is that the parents aren't leaving the children in the car intentionally and simply disregarding the risks. (The best example of 2nd degree murder based on gross recklessness I can remember from law school was the case where a drunk, enraged husband threw his beer stein at his wife who was holding a lit oil lamp; the lamp broke spilling firey oil all over his wife who burned to death. The child in the car is obviously quite different.)

"Sorry - didn't mean to impugn the new leader of the democrats - Jon 'Leibowitz' Stewart."

Leibowitz, eh? I didn't think Comedy Central was a restricted joint.

That's your point, right, that he's Jewish? Here's the thing, everybody already knows that and doesn't care. Or is your point that Stewart isn't his real name. Cogent analysis! Especially from someone with the handle "yeahoksure". Jagoff.

If you are going to trash an article in a scholarly journal, please link to that article. Linking to newpaper articles about the study is *not* the same. Also, if you haven't read the study yourself, then you really have no business being as flip with it as you were.

It's one thing to say that you don't care about or the US can't deal with a civil war in another country. It is completely another thing to claim that the civil war will end simply because the US is no longer involved. There are guerrilla fighters in all kinds of countries the US isn't occupying (like, for example, Indonesia, where Kilcullen did field research on insurgencies). Fantasizing that everybody in Afghanistan and Iraq will lay down their weapons and hug when the US leaves is as nonsensical, and arguably as irresponsible, as the neocon dream that everybody in Afghanistan and Iraq would lay down their weapons and hug when the US invaded.

Adjusted for inflation, the Dow is where it was in 1966? Did I read that right? Have the past four decades just played out as Red Queen theory -- running faster and faster just to stand still? Jeez Louise.

"If it's 'contractually owed' to you it's not a bonus, it's a salary."

If Coach K's contract states that he gets an extra $250,000 for getting Duke into the finals, that's a bonus. I think people would still consider it to be a bonus even after he gets Duke into the finals and Duke becomes contractually obligated to pay it. Of course, if Duke got barred from the tournament for 10 years because it was discovered that he was handing out wads of cash before and after games, one would hope that Duke would be able to recover or avoid payment of that bonus.