obama is a secret muslim drug addict who belongs to a christian church which hates america.

look, i only books which tell me what i always suspected is true. why else would i buy a book?

i was recently surprised to see how much more rigorous the academic standards are for the local public schools versus the private schools i'm familiar with. the first grade kids are reading and writing at age 5 or 6. the seventh grade kids are doing algebra and writing up lab experiments. of course, this particular town is well known for having good public schools (even though it's mainly middle class, not a wealthy suburb); and the housing prices show it. for what a house costs here, you could buy a house in a more dysfunctional town, and send your kids to private school. the invisible hand of the free market, indeed.

i do suspect that that is partially a cause of the housing crunch. there are folks who would never dream they could send their kids to private school, but whose aspirations motivate them to at least move to a good school district. but that locks them into paying the difference; if they had taken the private route instead they could cut their expenses by pulling out of private school when the economy collapses around them.

einstein et all showed us that there is no such thing as simultaneity. time is relative to three spatial dimensions.

and as usual, that sets up some analogies in social/political/economic terms. as the joke goes, when it's 12 noon in New York City, what time is it in Atlanta? answer: 1998.

whoops, got cut off there.

anyway, i meant to say i don't mean that pejoratively, although the original joke probably was, but coming from hicksville myself to the northeast (not new york though) it became clear to me, sadly, that the northeast goes through crises first, due to the concentration of people, cash, industry, etc. but the unstoppable hand of progress moves the "heartland" through those same crises, just a little later on. and, sadly to me, i could see them making the exact same mistakes, learning nothing from the experience of the places who had already gone through it; first congratulating themselves on how clever and good and righteous they were to avoid the stuff, then ignoring the first symptoms, then making all the wrong responses.

i guess it's a little like trying to guide the younger generation; they don't want to hear your advice from experience, they want to make the same mistakes.

and i'll bore you with it again.

being a republican nowadays requires having no longterm memory.

where some prankster has replaced the tape with a bungee cord.....

i saw an article on the ellis island experience this summer; included actual case histories of immigrants via social workers. one that stuck in my mind was a writeup regarding a woman who "just had to accept the fact that she could no longer provide her children as much food as she would like." nice to see we're less bigoted about who gets a turn in the barrel nowadays.

somebody's got israelis on the brain.....

it's just an extension of what's been going on in journalism since forever. it's pretty well known to everybody with an iq greater than room temperature that the "buff books", magazines about cars, or stereo equipment, or computers, etc. aren't likely to pan a product, particularly not from an established company. it's not, as sometimes suggested, because they're afraid of losing ad revenue; but because they're afraid of losing something more valuable; access. if they piss off a major manufacturer, there go all the exclusives, insider leaks, preproduction samples for review, as well as all the paid junkets for demos, etc. in short, they won't have anything to publish that won't have become old news by the time they publish it.

now it seems that that has been extended to the "legitimate" news media and their relationship with the powers that be. piss off the white house, or get too critical of their attempts to mold the public with a "leak", and you'll find yourself reporting on what the more malleable press reported on two days ago.

the alternative, of course, is hardcore investigative journalism, and that's difficult and expensive. no way to run a newspaper, not on a for profit basis in a diminishing field of business in a collapsing economy.

umm... i see a different obvous answer here; that americans who would like to see a solution to the Israel/Palestinian conflict should push for American candidates who share their views, given that the dog does wag the tail and not the other way around.

of course, the above strategy is exactly what the rightwingers are doing; they think militancy is the correct solution and put their money where their mouth is. and they have money and power, because they're rightwingers.

AvP wasn't that bad. compared to so much of the genre competition.

"when they talk about their honor, they really mean their anger".

the party which doesn't believe there is any problem with the climate cannot use unforseen bad weather as an excuse to scrub unpalatable media events, such as convention appearances by unpalatable ex-presidents.

aren't there other republical women that would at least look halfway reasonable? whitman?

she's not only run a state, she's run a town; maybe not the biggest of either, or for a long time, but more than obama, mccain, biden, and even hillary put together! so....

Sarah for president! Sarah for president! Sarah for president! It's not too late for the Republicans to correct the order on their ticket! Sarah for president! Sarah for president! Everybody email the republicans! Sarah for president! Sarah for president! Sarah for president!