yeah, Brightstar, possibly you have a point of some sort (although what it is I'm not entirely certain), but let's not forget: She's 15 years old! And that's the real point. Making a 15-year-old look like a "mature, sexy woman"--if indeed you feel that way--is creepy no matter how you look at it.

What came up for me is how our society is teaching girls ever more extreme attitudes about sexuality, and one of its goals: hooking a male.

the whole point of being a tease is that you don't deliver the goods until you have the male firmly on the hook. I won't say that's the ONLY point of being a tease, but it's one of the meta-points, shall we say?

A teenage girl's entire value system is often wrapped up in being attractive enough to the boys to snare a likely one, without giving it up. These NY girls reacted the way they did because Cyrus crossed one of those microscopic lines: she is, metaphorically, giving up the goods without snagging the male first. Or, she's giving up the goods to snag the male.

Either way, she went against the Code.

At least, that's how I read it. Very interesting stuff in any case. Makes me glad I'm 50. Experience does have its advantages.

I'll be interested to read the women's side of this, since, in the end, we males probably don't have any real insight into this stuff, do we?

this is partially a short-term/long-term problem...and a problem of magical thinking.

It's taken me nearly a decade to really get my head around the fact that we've consumed nearly half of all the oil in the earth. And that the rest of that oil will be far more expensive, and difficult to get out of the ground and process.

These are facts.

In the short-term, the market may turn bullish for awhile.

But the oceanic size of the dollar-denominated money supply, coupled with the truly epic amount of personal and public debt in the united states, is going to cause major problems all by themselves for years to come.

So..short-term? Your 401K probably looks better already this year, and will look even better in the months to come, barring the unforeseen.

But in the longer-term? 10-20 years? whole different story.

As I've found, to my cost, making money in markets is often simply a matter of disentangling short-term from long-term perspective.

chiefpayne, I quoted your line, but you are out of your mind.

do you really think finding more oil is the solution to this mess?

If you really believe that you are so pathetically ignorant you barely deserve to live, and I mean that.

do some research, think about what you find for about a year, then get back to us, because right now, you are living in a fantasy world.

...I was ready to give Clinton the benefit of the doubt right up until this pathetic pandering over the gas tax. She HAS to know better, but she's just pandering to phantom middle-class voters who she, or her brain-trust--such as it is--think will actually be swayed by such pandering.

I'm at the point now where if she's the nominee I'll certainly vote for her, but with my nose held firmly closed.

She's a corrupt, pandering hack. Why..just like her putative opponent. Damn. The American Political System at work...it can cough up two completely worthless hacks.

Obama is no saint. and no savior. But I'll vote for him with far more enthusiasm in the wake of this debacle.

..that's about right.

What's so funny about this little tempest is how completely mendacious it is.

All three of the current President-wannabees should be fully aware of just what's in store for America in the next 20 years. The end of "happy motoring" basically. THE END.

If they're not aware (although how they couldn't be is beyond me), they are not qualified to lead the country. If they are aware, then they're all lying through their teeth.

'course, they don't want to talk about the subject of peak-oil. So they don't. Instead, they argue about how all the marbles seem to be rolling downhill as the deck of the Titanic slowly tilts toward the cold, cold sub-arctic sea.

What's so tragic about this is that we could really be doing something meaningful about both climate-change, and the end-of-oil. We could have been doing something meaningful for the last 30 years, at least, but political cowardice, coupled with some very powerful vested interests, made that impossible.

Now, as the catastrophe really is nearly upon us, our leaders are STILL lying to us.

I can't wait for the first spot-shortages of gasoline. Watch our leaders point in all directions and say "who could ever have predicted it??" Bank on it.

It's enough to make a person despair. Over the cowardice of our leaders, and the pathetic ignorance of their followers.

Note well: in 1800 there were approximately 1 billion people on this planet, and they were, more or less, supported by a world economy that did not use fossil-fuels in any quantity.

We are about to begin the slide back to the energy-availability of 1800--if we're lucky--and that means, among other things, that 5 billion souls will simply disappear in the next 50-70 years. Anyone care to bet how that will be accomplished? Famine? War? Disease? Take your pick. There's no wrong answer.

Without fossil fuels? We are utterly, totally, completely fucked. Look around you. What *doesn't* come from fossil fuel? Or depend on it in some way?

Our leaders are contemptible liars. Corrupt opportunists who lie for their own power and benefit.

But I don't know what the answer is to that.

the thing that absolutely slays me about this is that those "working class" voters are, in large part, why we're IN this terrible political and economic mess to begin with.

They elected Reagan, twice.

They elected Bush Jr., TWICE. On the evidence, they're dumb as fucking posts.